You're welcome. My family relocated to Portland immediately following the completion of the merger. We had no ties to the area and didn't know much about the Pacific Northwest beyond what I'd experienced on overnights. Over the year that it took to finalize the meger, we made five day visits to both Portland and Seattle. Those visits helped us make up our minds. Seattle is a beautiful place but on pilot pay we'd have to live out in the suburbs and be trapped in traffic like in California. In Portland, a middle class person can still (barely) afford a house in the city. And, despite it's current (temporary, hopefully) issues, Portland's neighborhoods are the best places to live in the United States. You need to spend a week or so in east Portland to understand its unique magic. To me, it's worth the taxes and the current mess, but I'm not everyone. Your milage may vary. However, I see the current troubles in Portland as a last chance to buy in before the place goes over the top rich.


I stand by what I wrote earlier about the PDX base, it's a slow, painfull climb, but there's a reason that these FOs eat nails in order to be based here. It's easily the best base of any major airline in the country. Pdx is a small airport. The employee shuttle takes only 10 minutes or you can ride max to work and it drops you right at the terminal. There are never arrival delays at pdx. They have CAT3 approaches so you always make it home. Nothing tops finishing an early transcon at noon - - you brush by Mount Hood on arrival and 20 minutes later, you're home. The PDX-Hawaii trips are also amazing, you fly from one quiet little airport to another and only talk to ATC for 30 minutes on either side of the ocean. It's a dream.