Commuting pilots

[Chi829]

Who's hubbies out there commute? I guess what I am really asking is,,,, out of all the commuters, who has a fairly easy commute like 1.5 hr flight or less? My DH commutes from Panama City to Atlanta, and depending on the aircraft he's on, the commute is only 50 mins on the CRj and 1 hr 20 mins on the ATR. ANd we are only 12 mins from the airport here in Panama City. So, basically his commute is really easy. Honestly, there are some pilots who LIVE in atlanta and have a longer commute than DH. I was reading some older posts about how much commuting sucks, but I guess we're one of the lucky few. Its not that bad. Anyone else in the same boat?

[roz]

DH commutes to DTW which is a 1 hour flight. The problem is that the flight availability stinks. US Airways now only flies RJ's and they cancel most of the time. NWA is horribly unreliable. And service on his own airline is once per day and seasonal. But they all will be based in FLL starting in Oct. So he'll have more options to get there. His rule was to always bid a base with a one leg commute.

[Imachickadee75]

We're super excited about DH's transition to the CRJ and moving bases to DEN. While the flight is like two hours, he gains an hour (central to mountain time) going from Oklahoma to Denver. For us it means that he'll be able to commute the same day most of the time. Its a huge change from Ok to California that took the better part of 12 hours and two to three legs!

Jackie

[Brenda]

Hubby commutes to ATL on ASA, unfortunately they've cancelled way too many times and it becomes a headache. Now he has to leave 6 hrs before his report to make sure he can get there on time. The flight is 50 min blocked. But I do have to say that it beats the drivng 2-3 hrs to IND every time. I would so much rather live in ATL so that he could constantly have those 18-19 days off a month all the time. I miss him!

[Rebes]

DH commutes from Washington Dulles or National to EWR which is only about a 45 min. flight. His commute isn't bad because he has 2 airports to choose from and Dulles is only 6 miles from our house. His commute is usually shorter than those commuting into the city!

[HeffsRah]

BF commutes from PHL to MDT -- usually by car, about a 1 1/2 hour drive, or a twenty minute drive twenty minute flight.

NIGHTMARE this morning (drove to reading to stay over night at my granparents, report time at 450, left at 4 and at 5 oclock was lost becuase of closing ramps on the highway due to construction -- ending up driving all the way back to philly and starting from the second leg of the trip...horrible.)

Usually not a bad commute though he only has to leave a few hours before report time and it takes him no time to get home, so i'm happy about it. Would be nice if Piedmont had a hub in PHL though. oh well. beggers can't be choosers.

[Tambralyn]

DH commutes from ORD to STL, which is only and hour and fifteen minutes, but the loads are always really heavy, and flights seem to get cancelled a lot. If he really can't make it on AA, then he'll head over to Midway and take Southwest. Then it's another hour and fifteen minutes drive home.

I'm so glad we finally bought another car, because driving three hours there and back to pick him was taking a toll on me.

[BAC]

ha ha, Roz... ours are switched... my boyfriend commutes from DTW to PHL.

Usually pretty decent, between UsAir and NWA he can usually get a flight and he also has the option to take UPS, so he can give himself the latest flight out and earliest back in.

[Kristie]

Doug commutes up to JFK from PHX...it's a good 4-5 hr flight but his availability is actually pretty on par with commuting to ATL. granted, not as short of a commute as he was doing to SLC but he has a lot easier time commuting because he's now gone 6-12 days at a time which actually means less commuting altogether!

If he can't take DAL, he can take Jetblue and/or USair to get to work on time.

[flyershoe]

We have a similar situation... we live just south of Baltimore, only about 15 minutes from BWI... Brian commutes to EWR. The flight is less than an hour, and it's about a 3 - 3.5 hour drive to EWR with no traffic, but the traffic can be horrible (it's taken up to 6 hours one way)... once you factor in the price of gas and tolls, it would end up costing over $70 to drive. There are only 4 flights in & out of BWI to EWR, but they aren't very well timed, and the last flights are constantly getting cancelled. I would say that at least half the time we have to make a run to DCA (about 45 minutes)... their flights are usually more open and aren't cancelled as frequently.

I also have a commuting story from hell... the short story is that the flight was supposed to depart at 4:20pm on a Friday (actually, it might've been a Saturday - I know that it was on a weekend) and arrive around 5 pm. The flight didn't arrive at BWI until almost 10:30 a.m. the following day. They made an unscheduled stop at Dover AFB. Imagine the pax surprise when they saw men with machine guns and axes running at the plane!! It was a disaster... unhappy pax, unhappy military people.. they don't take too kindly when a civilian plane lands at a military base, of course. Oh, so after all that, the crew timed out. They're talking about this incident during recurrents at XJT. The funny thing is that Brian got paired with that CA over NYE (I went with him on that trip - the CA was actually a really nice guy). When the CA met him, he said "You look familiar... have we flown together before?" Brian said "Uh... well, I was a jumpseater when you made that stop in Dover."
It's too bad that he wasn't jumpseating in the cockpit, because he could've suggested an alternate airport.