relocating

[jet-dreams]

Is it unrealistic of me to not want to relocate in order to get a FO position?
I want to stay in my current location since my wife has a great career and that is how we are going to make it financially for the first few years. I also have a home here and would like to stay close to family.
I would be commuting out of SLC to my base. Do airlines want you to move to your base location?

Also can someone tell me how it works when your on reserve if your base in another city? I assume I would commute to the base then stay in a crashpad until called? What the heck do pilots do stuck in a crashpad for days at a time?

I am going to a part 61 school and just getting ready to start my instrument training. I am trying to understand what I am in for once I am ready to make the career move.

Thanks,
Erick

[MQAAord]

Read this excerpt from the main jetcareers webpage: http://www.jetcareers.com/content/view/73/96/#move

One of the FAQs is about moving/commuting.

[jtrain609]

Originally Posted by jet-dreams

Is it unrealistic of me to not want to relocate in order to get a FO position?
I want to stay in my current location since my wife has a great career and that is how we are going to make it financially for the first few years. I also have a home here and would like to stay close to family.
I would be commuting out of SLC to my base. Do airlines want you to move to your base location?

Also can someone tell me how it works when your on reserve if your base in another city? I assume I would commute to the base then stay in a crashpad until called? What the heck do pilots do stuck in a crashpad for days at a time?

I am going to a part 61 school and just getting ready to start my instrument training. I am trying to understand what I am in for once I am ready to make the career move.

Thanks,
Erick

I commute from Salt Lake City (I live in Park City) to Newark. I've been commuting to (mostly) reserve for about 8 months now. In fact, I'm writing this from my crash pad.

What I do is commute in the night before I start reserve. Yesterday I left Salt Lake on a 5:00 p.m. flight and I had to start reserve this morning at 9:00 a.m. in Newark. On the last day, with good luck, I'll be able to get released a little early to make the last flight back to Salt Lake at 5:00 p.m. Otherwise I'm coming home the day after I get done with my block of reserve days.

What I do to keep myself from going crazy...well I spend a lot of time on the internet. I think I'm about to start studying for the GRE, so that should be exciting. I read a lot, and if I'm going to sit for 4-6 days straight I'll try to get into New York at least one evening. I'll usually go to a book store and try to find something new to read if I do that.

Some weeks are better than others, and sometimes I'm sitting around going bat #### crazy, other weeks I'm able to work. It just kinda depends.

[jet-dreams]

jtrain,

Thanks for responding I hope you can answer some other questions.

What airline do you fly for?

How do you get from crashpad to work? Or anywhere else?

Are there many of you at the pad at the same time?

thank you,

[jtrain609]

I can give you a lot more detail at the M&G we're gonna have here in a few weeks, go check it out in the meet and greet forum. You in?

I fly for ExpressJet on the Continental Express side of the house, so I'm commuting to Newark. We do flying for Delta out of LAX, but I'm not senior enough to be able to hold it.

The crashpad I have has a van that runs to the airport at the top of the hour and from the airport at the bottom of the hour.

Right now we've got 4 of us sitting in here, all of us on reserve. Two of us (myself included) have trips tonight. I'll be gone tonight and back tomorrow afternoon around 4:00 p.m. to do two more days of reserve.

[MusketeerMan]

Train pretty much said it all. Commuting is tough...but you sound like you know what you'd be getting into. I commute from Northern CA to Ohio!! It always takes a day on the front end of the trip, but I bid trips that end early enough to make it home the same day. I was lucky enough to not have to sit any reserve, so I spend minimal time at the crash pad.

For the car situation, I bought a little truck off of Craigslist to get me around. Taxi's would get way too expensive and there's no good public transportation in this area.

It obviously depends on who you go with and what the base options are, but it's definitely doable. I fly for Republic on the Republic cert.

This may all change after the holidays as we're considering moving out to Columbus or to a city that has a short one hopper to CMH.

[sargeanb]

I'm based in CVG with CHQ, and we've got a LOT of commuters here. Most of our lines out of here start around 9-10 AM, and end around 4-5PM, which is perfect for commuting, and most of the commuters have good luck catching the first flight in or last flight out when a trip starts/finishes. If you can find lines like this, it works out pretty well, but in most cases trips start early and finish late, or of course you're on reserve. In this case, a crashpad/airport car arrangement is a necessity, and you'll spend a good part of your days off getting to/from home. I can definitely see where you're coming from though, it's great to have that extra income first year.

My first few months here I was based in Greensboro, NC, and I commuted from MCO-GSO (usually a two leg commute via CLT or ATL...avoid two leg commutes whenever possible), drove my car from FL to my crashpad the first week, and used my wife's car to get around when at home, though she worked as well. At the crashpad, I was there with a bunch of other new FOs, some senior FOs and FAs, and occasionally a few check airmen would stay since they drove in from far away and had an early show the next day. We'd trade stories, go get "community" food for the crashpad, go to BBQs or out to restaraunts with some other crews from the base, work out, play old school Nintendo, etc. to pass the time while we were on reserve at the crashpad.

When I switched bases to CVG, we picked up and moved, as luckily both my wife and I did not have strong ties to the area down in FL. Moving was a pain, but living in base is great, I drive 15 minutes and I'm home, my wife has a few part time jobs to help pay the bills, but she's searching for a full time job up here now and not having much luck. Commuting out of SLC at least you'll have plenty of options since its a DL base, but that could be a double edged sword as there will be lots of other crewmembers commuting out of there too. Bide your time wisely and be ready when hiring starts again!

[jet-dreams]

Commuting sounds like a major pain in the arse... I try to think of it as just one of the many dues I will have to pay in order to do something I enjoy.

My old flight instructor hired on with skywest about 6 yrs ago and has been based in SLC since day one. Some guys have all the luck.