Originally Posted by rickair7777

In the past guys did it because the could, but it has evolved into necessity today.

Few industries expect educated white-collar professionals to live an itinerant lifestyle (military officers, mine engineers, some petro engineers, some civil engineers, broadcast professionals). Those that do, tend to offer pay and benefits well above the norm. Also none of those industries expect you to airdrop your family into a strange town and then leave for half the month (military yes, but they have a very tight family support system).

Bottom line in todays world: airlines don't pay enough for the spouse to stay home. Moving every time you need to more pay on larger equipment, upgrade, change airlines, base downsize/closure makes it impossible for most spouses to have a career.

The compensation structure is based on the current system..if they screw with commuting, they are not screwing with me...they are screwing with my family. And that is going to cost them more than they can probably afford.

If you have to live in domicile, places like LGA, JFK will become VERY junior...and how are the junior guys going to afford to live there on airline pay? Move their families into two-room slum tenements? I don't think so...they will have to pay and pay bigtime to get people to sign up for that.

I (and many others) would never have gone down this road if the deal was a career of military-style forced relocation every 2-5 years.

BTW, no other employers generally require their people to live near work (except a few law enforcement agencies who want some blue presence in the hood).

They have unilaterally changed the deal enough in the last ten years...if they are going to require us to live in domicile they had better have an endless supply of experienced pilots to fill their ranks.

Everything I said applies x10 to the regionals.