No matter where you are working, regional or major, to maximize time at home with your family, be prepared to move to your domicile. Many, many pilots commute and it works for them, but their time spent waiting for that flight to and from work is time away from family.
For me it was a matter of where I wanted to live as to which airlines to target. When I first started applying, I started with the companies that had pilot bases where I would be comfortable living: Skywest with its Portland base, now defunct ACA in Washington DC, and Eagle with it LAX base. I didn't consider anywhere else. Same for major airlines. My goal was to be in Alaska flying for Alaska Airlines because that's where I wanted to live. It may have taken a bit longer (my contemporaries were all bugging out to the likes of Southwest, jetblue, AirTran, Continental), but it paid off and here we are. We (my wife and I- it's a joint venture!) didn't want to live anywhere else.
Schedules vary from airline to airline, and even by domicile within the same domicile. I was very pleased with the way Skywest built their schedules. For the first three years, I can count on one hand the number of 4-day trips I went on. Once I upgraded to the bottom of a long captain list in the almighty CRJ expansion, I was away from home a little more. Chasing seniority we moved two times with Skywest. By the end there I was flying mostly two-day trips and locals (one day trip, turn, out-and-back) with an average of 14 days off (without my days doing pilot interviews, it would have been more like 16). Now I'm here at Alaska and the schedules here in Anchorage are very similar to what I had at Skywest. Granted, I've only been here a few months, but I have yet to fly anything longer than a 2-day trip. I've been averaging about 15 days off.
A typical two-day AM trip will start early on day one and get done mid-afternoon day two. And similarly a PM trip will start mid-afternoon day one and finish late the next night.
It takes a very understanding person to be the spouse of an airline pilot. Our schedules are never consistent and traditional holidays are, many times, non-existent. Flexibility is the key. A traditional 9-5 job with family dinner every night, soccer games on Saturday and church on Sunday just won't happen in the airline business.
I love my job and my schedule. I'm sitting here on my 5th day off in a row watching my son toss his toy airplane around the living room when most 9-5'ers are staring at their office walls. Granted, I can only go to church with my family two times this month, but that will change as time goes on and I move up the seniority list. The bad parts of this are all worth it when I'm gliding around the arctic at 30,000 feet!
Because of a crazy ground/simulator schedule.
