CAirBear

Yup. I commute here (non VBD) and I don’t want to kill myself or hate my life. I love it here. It’s absolutely night and day to my last job.

The reason this place gets a bad wrap about commuting, is some of our bases are not serviced by anyone, but Allegiant. If your going to commute here you have to be smart and pick the best base for you. LAS/LAX etc are your best bets. If your trying to commute to BLI or AVL (unless you already live in SEA or CLT) I would say it’s almost not even possible.

Another reason is you need your own place to stay while at work. We don’t do the whole 3-4 nights on the road deal, at least not at the moment. So it’s another expense. Although it’s not hard to find a small 1 bedroom or split a house with another pilot for cheap. I currently rent a house north of SFB with another pilot here - 20 mins to the airport. Works great and there are a lot of cheap houses north of Sanford.

I have a few friends here that followed from my last job. They are all SFB based as well. On reserve days, I will golf go to the beach etc. So even though I don’t “live in base” I still have a good time while at work.

Again YMMV. I live in a medium size city of which Allegiant services all FL markets (except one). There are no worse than 2 flights a week and 75% of the year there are 3 flights a week and even more direct to SFB and home again.

It is not difficult for me to bid where I am off in the pm to take our flight home on a Thurs and then take our flight back to work Sun afternoon. I’ve had to fly into MCO 2 times. Been based there since July.

Again everyone’s situation is going to be different. I am thankful to have grown up in a wonderful city, with terrific friends and family. I am involved in my community and what goes on back home. It’s truly the best part of this career. I know guys who are 4th generation farmers who continue on a family legacy yet fly mainline UA and AA.

I get some people always move to base and don’t really care where they live. That’s cool. Everyone’s different. I actually did live in base at my last job for one year. It sucked. I had a couple pilot work friends around and that was it.

As for coming here vs NK and F9. Zero question. It’s 6 years at Spirit right now to make $100 right seat. Frontier is no better. Also we deal with so much less BS. You don’t deal with flow times, multiple tail swaps etc etc. 90% of the time you show up fly a leg and go back to base. It’s really chill. A lot less hustle and bustle. I love it.

9easy

VBD might not be "going away" but when the displacement of MD80 VBD happens, there will be displacements out of VBD airbus as well and probably a long line of guys looking to bid back into it. It will probably be impossible for new hires to get VBD for a long time if ever.