live in Key West
 

I have never flown for the airlines so forgive the ignorance. Could someone fly for any regional and live in Key West or would life be too hard at some and better at others commute wise?

Nonstop flights and lots of them make commutes easy.

Connections to an airport served infrequently that commonly has weight restrictions, such as Key West, make commutes hard.

Depends on how much pain you want to put up with and where you end up based.

Something with a Miami base looks do-able. Atlanta would probably be ok. Anything else would be painful. And remember that bases change frequently, so what you have now might not be what you have in 6 months.

Commutes pretty much suck no matter where you live but some are worse than others. Eagle has a MIA base but I'd never recommend anyone apply there. Seaborne is seeing some growth but I don't know what their bases are. I'm not too sure who has bases in the south east, I'm a west coast guy so I only looked at west coast bases.

Silver has a Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa base, but unlikely to get either of those. They need pilots, so it might be worth a shot.

Lived on a sailboat in Key West for two years. (2006-2008) Had non-rev privileges but found few empty seats available. There were some airline pilots living on boats in the Keys and they found non-rev / jump seat difficult.
Most just drove to Miami.

Lol recommend someone to go to Seabourne vs Eagle. Laughable.

Their upgrade time is short if I'm not mistaken. I has a friend there who did it ~2 years. Eagle is still 7+ and holding strong.

There are a number of pilots and flight attendants jumpseating from MIA to EYW. It's not always easy but Eagle has quite a bit of daily flights so if you plan properly you should be able to make it to MIA at least. I've seen DAL 737 and SWA 737 fly their daily as well. I believe they fly from ATL and SWA from MCO.

No matter how you look at it, if you have to do a 2 leg commute to get to work it's very tough and tiring and you will probably get burnt out. If you can fly for someone with a base in ATL or better yet MIA, life would be much easier if you plan to stay in Key West.

P.S. Don't listen to anything Bzzt might have to say about Eagle, if that is somewhere you're considering applying to.

St. Croix and San Juan for Seaborne

Sure, their Pilots and FA have problems getting paid. Second, you have to sign a 2 year contract.

You can upgrade but will make less than 50k as a captain. Based in St Croix or San Juan, commuting from key west have to be double leg and MIA to SJU are always full!

Upgrade is not everything in life.

I would imagine the peak season to Key West would hurt the commute pretty good. When I was down there all the flights were full.

Listen to these guys about commuting. It really sucks. I have been two sometimes 3 legging it for over a year and a half and finally gave up. I ended up doing 1 leg with a 1:45 drive after. The direct flight is so much easier to work with and I can control my drive vs extra worry with 1 or 2 more flights added on.

Upgrade = PIC = moving on. Who cares about a 2 year contract, no one hired today will be at a LLC or Legacy in 2 years anyway unless they're mil guys just getting 121 currency. Or have some sort of in like a chief pilot recommendation in which case you wouldn't need PIC time anyway so you wouldn't be looking for a quick upgrade.

How many times have you heard these guys who go someplace for a quick upgrade and are whining two years later because they are still in the right seat because conditions have changed. Make sure you can live with the pay and living conditions in the right seat if you go anywhere. Quick upgrades can disappear real fast. When I was in training at TSA last year, I had a Gojet guy wander in from his class and wonder why we would be at TSA when the upgrade a Gojet is faster. First the guy was a complete idiot for wandering into a TSA training room and asking that question, but fortunately we were a bunch of new hires and were more interested in the paper tigers than this moron. Fast forward a year later, the guys from my class are upgrading, and this guy is stuck in the right seat at Gojet with no upgrade in sight. Those that chase fast upgrades usually get very disappointed because of the instability of regional airlines. Buyer beware.

I used to think that way, but then I realized the "best" regional was still a steaming pile of crap and with the way contracts go today's good regional is tomorrow's garbage regional.

then why not...leave the regionals Bzzt? :eek:

I have applied everywhere but as of yet, no calls. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying that I'm still stuck in this hell hole.

well, good luck. we're all in the same boat. that we can definitely agree on.

Ok, but what about the commute? I was doing two leg commute for a while, is not a good place to be.

Good news are that the JR guys in NYC bidded for MIA and they got it. So if you get into eagle, be sure to bid for the EMB if is available.

Really? Thats weird because I got the upgrade 8 months ago and I still havn't even been at Eagle 7 yrs yet.. Things are moving now.. And it will drop more. 20 flows/mo + all other attrition. We have more movement than any other regional right now.

Have you worked for another regional? Eagle is far from the worst.

I agree, we have more movement than any other regional. People are leaving, that's why they are metering.

Hopefully it will work out ok for many of us, unless they let us die.

It's far from the worst and still horrible, that's my point.

All the attrition in the world won't help people upgrade if/when the fleet size shrinks.

It would be nice if they would make a high speed rail connected to that light rail down there and maybe stop at a few keys but just try to shorten the long traffic jam ride down there

There is a reason that places like Spirit and Blue were hiring Eagle FO's before CA's from places like Silver.

I've seen the people that get hired at Eagle and pass training. Unfortunately you will soon as well.