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I've heard of a couple guys that drive a little shorter than that distance where I work. Do you see that as an option if pairings aren't commutable?

If you're going to be on reserve, obviously you'd like to be within the callout time during rush hour (in a pinch you can prince$$ park at large airports which have a bus from the employee lot, that can save 30+ minutes).

For lineholders I'd say two hours drive is comfortable, three is doable, after that it becomes not fun and also will cause you to need hotels for very early shows and late finishes, especially for long, multi-leg regional days.

Also consider traffic conditions and report/release times (my drive is prone to traffic, but report/release tend to be early or late which is good for me).

At what point do most people consider flying instead of driving?

If you only live 3 hours away from your base airport wouldn’t it make sense to just drive that?

It would depend on flight availability and traffic. For me, three hours is the outer limit on driving, especially in typical metro traffic. But typically I'd drive for three hours (have done five but that's no fun, pretty much have to come in the night before for an early report.

The five hour drive was to avoid a 2-leg commute. Didn't last long, literally a few weeks and then took long-term military orders until I could hold a different base.

Yep. It’s expensive though, and means you are driving halfway for your reserve, or crashing in town. It’s fine once you have a line though, but still expensive.

I can't take full credit for it, it was involunatry but the timing worked out.

Where I’m from a 30 minute commute is about average for most people, so what I described doesn’t sound that expensive to me.

If a typical 9-5 job involves a 30 minute commute to and from work 5 days a week you spend 5 hours in the car every week commuting.

If you drive 3 hours to work, fly a 4 day trip and then drive 3 hours home you spent 6 hours in the car commuting. So it might be slightly worse than average, but I think it would still be worth not stressing over trying to commute by airplane.

Definitely no big deal by 9-to-5 standards as far as total time in your car, the potential issue with a long drive is typically circadian impact either before or after a long flying day.