Chances of adding home base gateway airport.
 

Gents,

I have viewed the 100 or so locations that a pilot can gateway from. Is there a chase of getting one added to the list? How about paying the difference out of my hometown to the aircraft's start point?
I'm currently in Corpus Christi. I can either get a 15 min uber to KCRP or drive 2.5 hours to KSAT. All comments are much appreciated.

Respectfully

CRP is on an internal list but it is a “grandfathered domicilie.” Don’t count on it. Can’t hurt to ask during the interview process.

Odds are low as we’ve got a bunch of pilots who are in the same boat as you who have an equally long drive from their domicile to their residence. Once it gets out there that an exception has been made it’ll be an influx of angry pilots demanding that they be given the same treatment and that isn’t a door management will willingly open.

Does anybody know if they have ever taken bases away? I am particularly interested in Flex for the XNA base but I worry that it could be an easy one for them to cut if they were to ever trim the list back down.

You would be grandfathered into the base. Meaning you would still be based there just no new hire could choose it.

That is good to hear!

A recent new hire that was given a base not on the official list (it was a "grandfathered" base). He asked for it in the interview, made clear he wouldn't take the job without it. And they said yes so.. it's evidently possible

what base?

Netjets now have 224 home based airports, including four in Alabama compared to Flexjets two. Flexjet has 112ish home based airports open to new hires. If there pilots can get to work from 224 airports certainly Flexjet pilots can do the same. Hopefully one day Flexjet will follow suit to make quality of life just a little bit better.

I heard that the airports must meet some kind of minimum threshold of airline service. But I would imagine Flexjet didn't look into every single airport in the US served by the airlines. It could be worth reaching out to the appropriate people to see if your particular desired airport could be investigated to see if it meets the criteria. I may do this with one or two airports, both of which are on Netjets list of domiciles. Given that, so far, Flexjet has been very flexible with case by case travel arrangements for training, I'd be surprised if they flat out denied any requests for new domiciles before taking a look at the requested airport. Seems like it could be a very easy way to potentially keep a pilot and attract additional pilots.