Originally Posted by
jagplt
The guys out there will be falling under his jurisdiction. His take on it is if you get hired to the FDA, which will be a decision made by the bean counters, you will need to live in domicile. Once you have been around the company and know the "system" and have a little judgement on liveing out of domicile you can stray more from that policy. But while on probation it probably won't be a good idea to set yourself up for a fall by trying to commute to asia.
jagplt, that may be his take on it, but this ain't the military. If someone chooses to commute, and are willing to give up the $2700, then they have every right to do so. I agree with you that it probably wouldn't be the best idea, but guys could do it.
For those poolies that are considering whether or not to accept getting hired into an FDA, I would even say that it will be easier to commute from the West Coast to HKG than it is to Subic. And there are several guys based there who commute from the U.S.
If the sample HKG bidpack is accurate, there will plenty of week-on, week-off lines, along with large blocks of R-day lines. Not so different from the current Subic bidpack, except for crappy quality of the trips, and the lack of short trips.
As to how to get to HKG from the US, it's not really that hard from the Bay area. Skyguide shows that there are 4 direct flights a day on Cathay (0005 or 1205 takeoff), United (1157 takeoff), or Singapore (0005 takeoff). and, we have a flight that goes to NRT (0245 show time) that could be your backup for the Cathay or SIN 0005 flights, and can connect to HKG pretty easily.
So, it's doable, but as you said, you'd be hanging it out there as a probie if you didn't make a check in.