It's all in the geography, and the airline schedules. As has been brought up, if your rest period doesn't fit into those flights, you'll have to leave a day earlier to be in ANC on time. ANC is the worst for this. I was only in ANC for about 4 months before being moved to HSV. I live in Charleston, SC, so this was a step up. From taking off in CHS to landing in HSV (with a layover in ATL) was only about 3 to 4 hours. I even had a few times where I left on the first plane out of CHS and got to HSV in time to start rest for that night! So no days lost at all. Now I'm PAE based and I'm hoping to maybe start a few flights out of CHS and maybe catch a few "at-home" layovers. Again, all in the geography and airline schedules.