I looked at my post and decided I'd better go get some!
And good post. I agree with you.

Well duhhhhhhhhh, everyone KNOWS that you moved to base so you could have the early departures, late arrivals and turns

Seriously, as Johnso said all we want is some balance and a recognition from the company that commuters save them big $$$ and provide operational flexibility. IE they can move flying around and commuters will just follow it vs having to pay for moves (and I would argue time off to make that move) like the military or any other major corporation.

The company can't have it both ways. They can't "make" more and more commuters by closing bases and moving flying around while they remain a commuter unfriendly company.

As was said, all we are looking for is balance. Honestly, I agree with your post.....we all make choices and need to live with them. I just did something I said I would never do....commute and chase money. I just went from 20% on an LAX ER to 65% on an SEA 330

Ferd

24 Months per the PWA

This whole commuter vs. non-commuter issue is troubling.

First off - all pilots should realize that the more we support others, the more they will support us. How does the junior pilot who lives in base, and is not willing to support commuters, feel about the senior WB commuting pilot who does not care about scope?

Secondly, the only winner when pilots start pursuing parochial interests is management via decreased pilot clout. Think how much more effective we can be as a pilot group if we would all be willing to sacrifice a little bit of our interests to the greater good of the pilot group as a whole. I think we would all be better off. I think we would find our particular interests that we thought we were compromising on, would actually do quite well.

Before any of the anti-DPA crowd jump in and misinterpret this as a slam on the DPA, that is not what I am talking about. Competition for representation is good, and if anything in response to the DPA, DALPA has recently upped its game. Blind allegiance to anything is probably not good.

Although the fault for this condition, apparent lack of solidarity, lies primarily with all of us as individual Pilots, perhaps DALPA could do a better job explaining why we all need to support each other. Specifically: Senior Pilots should be concerned about Scope, non-commuters should be concerned about commuting policies, young pilots should be concerned about retirement, healthy pilots should be concerned about disability and sick leave policies. Not for altruistic reasons but for our own self interest.

In my opinion we will all fare better in areas that we are intimately concerned with if we would be more willing to support others in areas that may not appear to directly affect us. Think of the whole "synergy" thing.

Scoop

It's two years after the day you are actually displaced, not the day you found out about the bid results.

Very well said Scoop. My point exactly. We need to support each other, not cut each other off at the knees. Without unity, we are doomed to fail.

Wow Scoop, spot on.

If we aren't united in supporting each others interests first, then there is no bargaining agent that can come in and fix anything...

Without a doubt, belittling other pilots concerns because of lack of care, insight or understanding is by far the worst thing we can have going on in our pilot group right now. That attitude is the enemy to unity and will ultimately result in a compromised contract at best...

We got to support each other first. If a Delta pilot has a problem, we all have a problem!

Cheers
George

Right.On.The.Money!

Some good posts here on the arrogance of calling commuting a choice... I read all the comments, and it just astounded me how many pilots wrote in derogatory comments towards commuters making their own "choice" and having to live with it... It only takes one example of "false" to make a sweeping generality like this wrong.
I'm in a house, bought at market price for an AVERAGE 4 BR in 2005, that is now $250,000 upside down. I can't move. When I joined the company, BEFORE getting furloughed for 6 years, there were DFW, MCO, ANC options for living which no longer exist--and those were my top 3 choices! I DID move to DFW, and then I got furloughed...for 6 years. When I got recalled, guess what? I'd bought a house near my job that got me through furlough... just the way a "good Delta non-commuter should" apparently. And now I'm stuck there unless someone will give me $250k to move. And all three places I desired to live are no longer options. And I've been bumped out the bottom of all west coast spots I could hold as lineholder in 2007, SEA, LAX, and SLC briefly, so even if I HAD been magically able to move to base due to a $250k gift, I would have gotten displaced again!

Here's the breakdown of commuters by base:
ATL 38%
DTW 78%
MSP 40%... but that includes a bunch of 330 guys who claimed non-commuting, higher now.
NYC 77%... doesn't include the new 320 nums, virtually all commuters, so higher now
LAX 42%
SLC 36%
SEA 45%
MEM... survey was around 45% total, but will now be essentially 100% for a while
CVG 4%, so all live in base, expect 96% commuters min when CVG closes soon.

When pilots see right in front of them mandatory displacements and base closures and shrinking category lists and airframe types disappearing, then can not draw the obvious and logical conclusion that this creates commuters, it surprises me. When they come on a board like this, or answer a survey question, stating commuting is a choice, implicitly assuming that everyone in the world can just pick up and move to ATL if they REALLLLLLY wanted to... the arrogance and insensitivity to other folks possible life problems is astounding.