Originally Posted by Boomer

If you live in MSP, DFW, or CLT, by all means skip JetBlue and gamble on getting hired at your local major/legacy airline. Never commute.

Otherwise, you owe it to your family to minimize your regional experience. Get to a major and then move to base. Literally no other way to win in this career.

Rather than go to a regional with crap pay and quick upgrades, I wanted a regional where I could be comfortable to raise my family - “just in case” I didn’t get hired at a major right away. (Keep in mind this was right after 9/11 and there were about 12 majors at the time).

So I went to the regional that had pretty good work rules and pay that was not terrible for a regional. It was called Comair. And I got to be home with my family.

Three years on reserve, pay cuts, and a decade in the right seat. Then Delta pulled the plug and 1800 of us had to start over again at other regionals because none of the majors were hiring. Instead of commuting to the majors when my kids were little, I wound up commuting to another regional when my kids were early teens - and that’s when you need to be home the most.

There will never be a good time to commute with a family, but there’s also never a good time to get comfortable at a regional.