rickair7777

Also consider that if you live in base you have more opportunity to grab or trade into premium.

refplusnone1

Dfw to LAS commuting here. 30 flights a day so getting there isn't hard. Financial cost about 600 for crashpad, uber, and what not. Each trip it coss me about 10 hours commuting front and back total. I don't pick up open time account wanting to spend time at home not commuting to another trip. Commuting is temporary account being based at home next month. I personally wouldn't commute for my whole career but that's just me.

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myrkridia

Add $400 to whatever numbers you come up with to add a Steam Deck to your commuting expenses. You can thank me later!

On a serious note, some commutes might not require more than the very infrequent hotel night for when things don't work out. The opportunity cost from reduced ability to manipulate your schedule, lack of premium availability and TAFH dwarf the expenses incurred during the commute itself.

avi8orco

Car gets 20 mpg…round trip to the parking place and back is 8 miles so I guess that’s about .4 gallons. .4 times 3.79/gallon of premium is about a $1.50 a trip. Do mostly day turns so 15 or so trips to the lot a month…so $22.50 a month

I pay $30 extra a month over the company stipend for covered parking

So a little over $50.

Long story short…you want to live in base.

PossibleDeviation

Each commute is different. I had to commute for a while MSP-SLC and it was hell. Infrequent flights, hub to hub and it was during covid so everyone was limiting capacity. I vowed that if I had to do that commute long term I would quit and find something else to do. It wasn't worth the stress.

I now commute now MSP-ORD and have no complaints at all. 18 flights a day and only a 1 hour flight. I leave my house 1 hour before the departure and have a few options to get me there by report. Maybe 1 or 2 hotels per month only if I want to get into a trip with a early report/late release. I do quite a bit a premium as well so it's definitely doable depending on the commute.

Andy

I used to commute from LAS to SFO. The state income tax savings was in excess of $30K. Then there was the much lower cost of living in LAS vs SFO area.
The commute was well worth it.

PilotJ3

I spend about $800ish a month commuting.

$300 crashpad
$500 in food and transportation aprox

That’s about $9600 a yr. But that’s just average, some months I spend less, some months I have vacations, sick time, trips that start/finish with deadhead, some months I bid reserve on purpose.

That still less that what I would pay in state taxes if I don’t commute. I also don’t work as much as before, I try to stay close to 72hrs a month and don’t pick overtime anymore.

m3113n1a1

Financially I'm well ahead (like 30k a year or more) by commuting (income tax savings and cost of housing), but the time and stress might not be worth it... I'm considering moving to base.

RJSAviator76

I look at it from a different angle.

I look at it from the angle of days spent away from home for work purposes. Take your airline's minimum pay or average daily guarantee. At most airlines it's like 5 hours or 5:15. At SWA, our ADG is 6.5 TFP. Multiply that with your current rate. Then add your B-plan/NEC. If you are working a noncommutable pairing at least on one end and you do it 4 times a month, you're essentially leaving 4 days of pay on the table by not living in base and getting paid for DH home vs. jumpseat.

Now do some math...

Your hourly rate x minimum day pay x how many days a month you do this x your B-plan percentage x months in a year you do this x years you have left. That number easily goes into 7 figures over one's career. That's the real cost of commuting. The whole Uber, crashpad/hotels, etc is peanuts.

Andy

It was still cheaper for me to live in NV and commute to CA. Huge savings in both taxes and cost of living. And QOL is much better in NV than CA - sooo many CA expats moving to other states because of poor QOL in CA.