Originally Posted by AZPilotMike

I fly from Phoenix to Dallas, so about a two hour commute. Heres the thing for me, its not so much the time that it takes to commute or even the schedules, as the I am able to build my schedule to allow me to commute it without losing very much time. What causes all the stress, at least for me, is the added pressure of booking the flights, figuring out the time change differences so that you check in on time, verifying loads and so on. Its all the small busy work details.

When you take all of that into account and THEN add in the fact that AA has no problem overselling their flights by 10-20 seats, the stress really picks up. I have gone to bed at night with 30 open seats and by the time I wake up and check the loads, it is oversold by 10. I now have to shoot out of bed, make a mad dash to the airport several hours before I really need to, just to try and catch an earlier flight, all the while praying that a jump seat remains open and an AA guy doesn't decide to take the same flight. This is frustrating and ****ty if you ask me, but it won't change anytime soon.

Commuting is doable, I do it as do many others, it just adds extra time, effort and un-needed stress to the job. Hub to Hub commuting is much worse then outstation to hub commuting so if you can do that, you will have a much better time. You will be traveling on your own metal, which gives you priority and the loads tend to be lighter and more consistent.

On that note, it is 6:30am here and I am now already starting to get ready for my commute to Dallas for my 6:30pm start time tonight. Do the math, thats 12 extra hours of dealing with work stuff that a local guy/gal doesn't have to worry about.