Originally Posted by Turbosina

1. Welcome and thank you for your service!

2. DFW should be pretty easy to get out of training. BOI, not so much. It's also a MX base so most trips there start at oh-dark-thirty, and end late at night. In other words - NOT a base you want to commute to.

3. No official commuting policy.

4. Totally depends on the commute and time of year. General rules:

a) Avoid hub-to-hub commutes (i.e. ORD-DEN, ORD-SFO on UA, ATL-SLC on Delta, DFW-MIA on AA, etc etc.).

b) During the holidays, commuting gets more difficult since the aircraft are oversold and you may be competing with multiple other pilots for the jumpseat.

c) Where possible, avoid two-leg commutes.

d) Commuting short distances on a -200 when the weather is bad can be
dicey, since we're usually landing-weight limited, and a jumpseater in a -200 can put us out of forward CG limits, which we can't address by adding more ballast in the back because now we're over max landing weight (due to the short distance and the need for alternate fuel when the wx goes down.)

e) Carry bags of chocolates and cookies for the gate agents and FAs. Often the gate agents make the difference between you making it into the jumpseat, or not. That's not really how it's supposed to work, but it's the unfortunate reality.

f) Commuting to reserve is a special brand of torture. Especially if you don't get called to fly, so you rot in Brand X motel for 4 days before heading home for 2 days and then coming back to do it all over again. The good news is, if you get into a junior base you won't be on reserve for long.

5. While some airlines do have a commuting policy, SKW handles each case individually. The average number of 'occurrences' (missed duty days due to sickness, family issues, missing commutes etc) is around 7 per year. However I would be very careful while on probation your first year –– people can and have been terminated for missing commutes while on probation. But you kinda have to make it a habit...they're not going to cut you loose for missing one commute.

Hope that helps!