At Envoy I’ve almost always been able to have a line or trip trade into sequences that are outside bad traffic.

I try to do that in socal. If a trip starts or ends during rush hour, I just go to the gym or a movie. Or take a nap.

I spend less hours per week commuting than I did in my previous 9-5 job life.

As others said, who cares is the biggest commuting quality you can have. I don't stress about flight loads one bit.

Attitude is everything....

https://youtu.be/g56lsXDX2rw

Pick your poison. Live where wifey wants and commute to work. Or drag her to a shi++y town to live in base (away from family and support) and commute to see your kids after the divorce.

Yup, my girlfriends entire family (and mine too) live in the same city as us. No way I’m gonna pull her away from her family and friends to a city where she doesn’t know anyone and I’m off on a 4 day. Then I’ll come home to ask why the plumber is always there...

Yup, as long as your family is happy then commuting is pretty tolerable. When you family is not happy and you are on the brink of divorce, for example being gone 20+ days a month due to work and commuting missing multiple family events and your children's activities, well then commuting becomes a living hell.

Can't argue with that. Honest but accurate.

Pilot self-defense:

1) With kids, only live in a location (big base or easy commute) where YOU are at least OK with hanging out long-term in the event of big-D.
2) Ensure that local law will "anchor" the family to that location, ie shared custody occurs at that location UNLESS both parties agree otherwise.
3) If the relationship is struggling DO NOT move somewhere to make her happy unless conditions 1) and 2) are met.

I've seen this one play out many times, wife is unhappy, pilot agrees to move back to Podunk Falls to be near her family, she drops divorce papers as soon as enough government paperwork is done to establish residency (DL, lease, mail forwarding, etc). Boom, you're now anchored to almost 20 years of trains, RJ's, and automobiles to see your kids.

Many of them become vicious psychotics at divorce time, and will leverage every possibly advantage to punish you and extract as much money from you as they can. The kids becomes pawns in the game, and you end up trading away your money and QOL for their welfare, and to salvage some sort of relationship with your kids. She knows you're in checkmate if the family is anchored where she wants to be, bonus points if it's a difficult commute. You can quit the airline, but only if you have skills to make enough money for alimony and child support.

Most heart-breaking story I ever heard involved a pilot friend in the above scenario, mom was bragging to friends and family about how much she was making dad suffer with the geography, deliberately change dad visitations at the last minute, no shows, etc. His eight year old daughter observed all this, and in tears told dad that she didn't want him to see her because it was so hard on him. She promised they could resume their relationship at age 18. He didn't see her regularly for years, but the silver lining was that the state in question allowed minors to pick the custodial parent at age 14 or so. The daughter got help from a friend's parent, got a lawyer, and got her own custody switched to dad. Dad showed up soon after with a uhaul, a custody order, and a sheriff's deputy to collect his daughter.

Rick speaks the truth. Eerily hits close to home.

whats too short to fly?
 

I live on the Illinois side of St. Louis, I'm 45 min drive to STL, Republic is on my short list of Airlines that I want to apply for. I'm about 4.5 hour drive from ORD and MCI and about 3.5 from KIND.

I'm not even sure if those are junior bases or not, just not sure whats worth flying and what might just be easier to drive in.

For reserve, you need to be able to be inside security, comfortably within two hours (or whatever the call-out is). That includes whatever parking shuttle you have to take, and rush hour traffic.

If you can bid reserve that only touches one rush hour, as opposed to both morning and evening, then it's practical to drive part of the way and go to a gym, movie, whatever until rush hour is over and then go home again.

As a line holder, I would drive three hours rather than commute by air. Maybe four hours if it's an easy drive (no traffic). Some of that depends on the nature of the commute by air.

MCI and IND would not be good to fly to from STL because there are very few direct flights each day. ORD might be a toss up depending on traffic and loads for the day because there are a lot of direct flights each day. If you go to RPA I would think IND would be the best for you because you likely wouldn’t have many issues with traffic. Plus IND is on the southwest side of Indy right off of 70. It would be an easy drive. Where as if you go up to Chicago you will fight traffic there and back, and if you go to MCI you’ll fight traffic going through St Louis.

Keep in mind from reading the RPA forum IND is an outstation so the trips begin early and end late. I see a lot leave around 5:30 to 8:30 am and many getting back around 10:00 to 12 midnight.

Why not Trans States or Gojet? They have STL domiciles.

Considering, just keeping options open