Tri-Rail is great, but it stops running at 9PM, so sometimes you are screwed. Commuting out if FL is a real pain. a flight will go from wide open to oversold overnight. If you can live in base. If you can't, well, welcome to club commuter clause.

Three rules for aviation (and financial!) happiness:

Don't commute

Stay married to your FIRST wife

Pay your taxes

Violating Rule One often results on violating Rule Two creating financial incentives to violate Rule Three.

GF

I have commuted from PBI to NYC for years and it is really easy. People that do MCO or Daytona hate the commute but FLL and PBI are easy. Sprit, Airtran, Delta, United and most importantly jetblue have a lot of capacity between the areas. The buses between airports in New York make it easy although time consuming. Getting from PBI to FLL to MIA is a bit of a pain but doable. Luckily there are enough non revs you can usually find someone to spilt a car with. That said plan on sitting in the jumpseat.

If what seahawker01 says is true, I don't mind getting a flight out early at PBI/FLL with Sprit, Airtran, Delta, United or Jetblue to NYC, and then taking another commute to MSP or DTW if absolutely necessary. Are flights to MSP/DTW as difficult to get to from NYC as it is from S.Florida?

Has anyone experienced that the commute out of RSW or TPA been any easier to NYC/MSP/DTW than from South FL?

NYC is a lot easier to get to than MSP or DTW. During the summer the flights are cut way down to MSP and DTW and then in the winter it's nonrev mania. Good luck!

Is MSP/DTW a lot easier to get from NYC?

There are usually seats to one of the NYC airports or the jumpseat of course. The gamble with going through NYC is there can be quite a few delays. Commuting isn't fun and two leg commutes are even worse, good luck with your decision.

I found tpa to be a good backup for me. Bigger airport more options but remember with more options comes more nonrevs and jumpseaters. Most of my time in the jumpseat came from riding in and out of tpa. I did the commute to Boston on reserve all last year. if you leave real early and give yourself plenty of options then you'll eventually get there. Also picking off peak flight times is crucial to easing the stress when you show up at the podium. Good luck.

I heard of a guy commuting out of TPA to PHX then back to the east coast to work. It was pretty crazy, but it is Florida commuting!

To the OP RSW would be my only choice if I were ever to try to commute out of FL. My time there non-reving before I was in CASS was pretty decent even in season but like anywhere else it can get bad.

Now who could that have been? And I head it was Tpa-atl-phx-east coast??? And only if jetblue was wide open haha! Moral of the story is you get real creative to save a few $$ here and there