Airline Pilot Central Forums

I think the main difference between a airline crash pad and "normal people" apartments has not been made clear so far.

The way a crash pad works, is that you have a lot of people that use it, but hopefully not at the same time.

Let me explain. Airline work schedules usually allow many pilot and flight attendants to commute to work. So someone living in say... Omaha, can still live there yet work out of MKE.

He/She will travel to MKE (usually) the day before their trip starts, and spend the night in the "crash pad". The next day they leave MKE and usually overnight in hotels in other cities for a few days time. The goal of this airline "commuter" (as we call em) is to spend as few days in the crash pad as possible. They try to travel in the day you start or travel home the day you end the trip. But many of the work schedules require you to start early on the first day or end late on the last. Trips that start late and end early are the most desirable and tend to go to the more senior people (we bid our schedules according to date of hire senority)

So a pilot or flight attendant has two choices, to sign up for a crash pad, or buy a hotel room in the city they are based for every night they have to stay there. This is an important thing, because many "commuters" will compare the fixed cost of joining a crash pad vs. the cost of using a nearby hotel. If a commuter had to spend 6 nights in MKE, and could get a hotel room for 35$, then it might be unlikely that they dign up for a 250$/mo crash pad.

But if the hotels are expensive (like NYC for example), or the commuter needs a room for say 10 nights a month, then a Crash Pad is a better deal.

So back to the original point of this post, you might have a fair number of people signed up for the crash pad, but night to night you will usually have less than 1/3 of them using the facility. This is because we all bid different schedules, and when a commuter is off, they go home.

That having been said, there is one exception. A pilot or flight attendant that is "on call", or what we call reserve may or may not have to spend every night they are on duty in the crash pad. The company will call upon them to travel out to cover flying as needed. But if they are not assigned any flying, they usually have to remain in the crash pad and be ready to get called in. Even in this case, these commuters will not spend every night at the crash pad because of days off, or being assigned flying out of town.

I hope this helps you understand the unique nature of a airline crash pad.

As for advice on what to install in the place, one big plus for a crash pad is high speed internet (cable usually) hooked up to a wirelss router. This allows multiple people to get online in the same place. I recommend a decent TV (cable),a dvd player, and a good coffee maker. Iron and ironing board is a plus too.

Good luck