Originally Posted by Stratoliner

Positive space commuting is really stupid. Each seat in each airplane represents millions of dollars of revenue for the company, which is revenue to make everything work including your paycheck. Look, lots of pilots getting Delta One to Europe via standby the weekend school gets out in June for their whole family every summer would be really sweet, but just think for a second, that many empty seats is not good news for your company, which you should care about. Thousands of seats per day blocked off permanently, ticket sales permanently lost, otherwise potential cash flow thrown out the door to convenience an outrageous lifestyle demand. Positive space commuting would turn sane people who don't want to commute into commuters because now it's easy and stress-free. That's thousands of seats per day which are lost revenue to the company and millions of dollars per week. Then, flight attendants would get PS commuting soon enough, it's only fair (heck the case for them getting it is better than pilots, they get paid less and benefit from living in cheaper places).

In every industry under the sun, people move for a job. People pack up the Subaru and drive across the country for a few grand a year, for a good opportunity. This is what normal people do in every single industry. The people who aren't willing to move for opportunity lose out. Just because you can commute doesn't mean you should, and just because you've made that choice (and you're free to make it) doesn't mean that that choice, which no worker in any industry outside of pilots and flight attendants can even entertain, is one which the company should subsidize. Sorry. Think of the big picture. If you told the average American that if they moved to one of a half dozen or so cities, they could (by themselves) earn a top 5% U.S. salary in 5 years if they just moved, they'd think you're bonkers for not doing it, and would move in a heartbeat. If you don't want to do what you would HAVE to do if you had literally any other job, at least suck up your choice to put up with commuting, and not expect the company to pay for it (and how do you compensate the people who do live in base?).

Assume each seat makes $250 per day (at $0.21 RASM at DL, that's 1200 miles per day, which is a reasonable average), and 1,000 pilots commute PS per day, thats $91,000,000 per year of lost revenue. Sure, there's often empty seats, the lost revenue would be lower in practice, yadda yadda, but that is the request you're making when you ask for PS. If half the pilots commute, that's an extra $10k to them per year because of their own lifestyle choice. While DL is doing very well financially right now, at American that number represents 15% of their 2024 net income. Is that really a reasonable demand for what the shareholder would fairly consider an unreasonable lifestyle choice?