Jheyviloria

The biggest downside for me in becoming an airline pilot is being away from my wife and kids. I wanna be there for my kid's birthdays, graduations, and just in general. Do you get to go home every night at some regional airlines as if it were a 9-5 job? Are most regional airline routes short-haul so I'll be able to be home with family more often? Thank you, share how your schedule is working at regional.

Day4mx

You're going to be gone. You're going to be gone alot. Once you hold a line prepare for 4 on 3 off. If you commute. Plan on coming in on day zero and going home on day 5.

deltajuliet

Commuting, you might only get home 5 nights in a month. Living in base, you might only be gone 5 nights in a month. And everything in between. Living in base helps tremendously. Do that and maybe you'll get 15 days off at home after a little while. If you're creative with scheduling, even more nights.

1800RVR

The only regional I'm aware of with exclusively day trips is Cape Air. But it definitely is no 9 to 5, and you would have to relocate to one of their domiciles to be 'home' every night. Commuting is not really possible here. Silver advertises day trips too but who knows how senior you would have to be to hold that. If you want to work 9 to 5 and be home every night, I suggest being a CFI

404yxl

Plan on this and you won't find yourself shocked when you see it. Daytrips come with time and possibly good luck, timing, and good attrition above you that may occur. Don't plan on it however.

John Carr

Being a pilot means being gone away from home. And often times, when you don't want to be.

It's in the brochure, it's ALWAYS BEEN IN THE BROCHURE. It's not even in the fine print.

Now cue the senior RJ pilot with "well, I'm senior and hold day turns/"locals" and am home every night blah blah blah......"

Or worse, the "well I know a pilot at (insert airline here) that holds nothing but day trips/"locals" blah blah blah......"

Sure, good for those guys. If you look at a bid pack/trip inventory, those pilots ARENT in the majority.

BeatNavy

I live in base and have been able to swap/drop trips for day trips. It took about a year to have that schedule. I started with about 20 nights away while commuting. That was with a brand new kid. It's gotten progressively better with seniority. I average 7-8 nights away a month now. This will drastically change in May when I upgrade or go to a new airline, and I will commute to reserve again and my QOL will go down the tubes for a while. Every seat swap or airline swap we get to reset seniority.

If you live in or move to a junior domicile for your airline of choice you can be home a lot more than if you commute. Commuting, particularly to reserve, is hell, especially at a regional..

Utah

If this is important to you, you must live in domicile. It's also dependent upon the domicile as well. DEN and MSP at SkyWest have a lot of 4 day trips, however bid at the 50% or better level in SLC and you might only spend a night or two a week in a hotel. At that level it's entirely possible to fly locals or 2-3 day trips. I bid between 40-50% (so I'm not really all that senior) in SLC and used my overnight bag last year for less than a dozen nights. In fairness though, bidding 20% in other domiciles may have seen you doing 3-4 day trips still.

The pilots at SkyWest also get 5 guaranteed days off a year (Gold Days). They cant be used over holidays, but you can use them for birthdays, anniversaries, etc..

Frankly though, this career requires a good deal amount of time away from home. If you don't have a spouse that can handle that find another job.

Every time you take an upgrade or move on to a better company it requires going back to a crummy schedule, something else to think about. It's probably the biggest reason why the top 20% of the seniority list is going anywhere here.

I need to add that even though I didn't use my overnight bag all that much, I still worked a lot of weekends. If you think you'll have weekends off like normal people - forget about it. That will require seniority in domicile and working 4 day trips during the week.

AdiosMikeFox

It will change depending on the airline, your seniority, the equipment, base, commute and the temperature of a moose's nose in January while facing north in the snow on a Tuesday.

I've had 4/1/5/2/4/3, On/off respectively. I've also had 3/4 on off for months and had a stretch of 6 days off in there, too. Schedules have gone to crap at my airline. Others fare better.

Generally you will always do better if you live in base. A commute is nothing but stress, more days gone, cash and time out of your pocket. Irreplaceable time. This is big stress on your family. Stuff always breaks when you're gone. The kid will get sick. It'll dump snow. Whatever. Your other half will be stuck dealing with it solo. It's going to take a strong relationship to deal with that. Don't forget missing almost all holidays while you're junior. Missing all weekend events because you won't be able to hold weekends off. I've been at my airlien for a decade+ and still can't hold holidays/weekends. Missing the kid's birthdays for the same reason. Then the occasional missed commutes home because of weather or getting done too late because of some hub airport's desire to slap a rolling 1 hour EDCT/Ground stop combo on your last leg/last day because someone saw a puffy cloud in the sky.

Decide against being a regional pilot yet?

This doesn't happen every day, every trip or every month. But you really feel it when it does happen.

Live in base if you can. That's worth a LOT. Then hope they don't close the base.

Even after all that, I really like doing what I do. It'd be difficult to do anything else. If you can't say that, this aviation life will be really hard to deal with.

John Carr

All true. And if you get to go through multiple base closures in a short period of time, a displacement or 2, cherish those times where have more nights at home than away. Because they may not be the "norm".

However, years ago I worked at RJ operator A, commuted since they didn't have a base where I lived. A buddy of mine worked for RJ operator B, had a base where we lived. I was line holder, commuting. He lived in base, on reserve, with a crappy contract. I was home more than him, had a better pay check, days off, etc.

Now, this ISNT meant to start the whole stale/worn out "commute to a line or sit reserve in base?" question, NOT AT ALL. I've sat reserve at home when I could have commuted to a line. There were months it sucked and months it was great.

Just saying that with the varyance in regional contracts, well, a lot just simply depends......