I’ve lived in base and commuted with the Passenger airlines. Commuted the entire time with FDX.

If I could do it over again, I would move to within a 3, maybe 4 hour drive of Memphis with reasonable airline service. That would be ideal. (If the other FDX Domiciles are doable to anyone looking at FedEx, I’d go for those with the same drive bubble.)

Outside the 3-4 hour drive bubble, I would move to a Hub city for FDX and/or AA/DAL/UAL, probably throw SWA in there too if I were going to do the winged commute. Definitely want a city that has day/night FDX flights. Having just a city served by FDX at Night outside the 3-4 hour drive bubble would really suck in my opinion. Unfortunately, that knocks off a fair amount of nice cities. It’s been mentioned before, but the loss of the NWA/Delta Hub was a huge blow for commuting to/from Memphis offline.

Honestly, I wish we would have tried the Memphis area. Commuting in the end sucks, but if you are going to commute, I think this is the best place to be a commuter at.

For additional data, I’ve commuted for 15 years from a city that’s a 5.5 hour drive from MEM with day/night FDX flights most days (one or the other sat/sun). Maybe drive once every other year to have my car during training since I don’t have an airport car (nor crashpad). Commute is a complete non-factor. Probably get to/from work via company-paid ticket 60% of the time, shaving an average of 1-2 days off my schedule per month (i.e. on the clock while at home). I’m 75% in a WB left seat but the above has been pretty standard through various levels of seniority in 3 different seats since I’ve been here. Comparing notes with many, many pax airline friends whose tenure stretches as far back as 25 years we have it MUCH easier as commuters.


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Thank you.

Find the area you want to live in and get hired by an airline close to there.

Comuuting ads so much wasted time. Life is short. 2-3 hour sit for your outbound JS getting home at 5-6 am when you got off the clock 6 hours ago...

Can always move to memphis. Its not horrible. 90 percent of life is working or hanging out with family and doing sports etc. GTown and Cville has all that. Food/Bvg scene in Memphis is pretty good and you are three hours to a good lake in AR.

Germantown is great if you don't have kids. You'll probably be paying for private school if you do that.

I live in Arlington TN. I don't even lock my doors. I flew with someone recently who talked about how much he hated Memphis because of all the crime... This was less than 5 minutes after telling me about how someone had just broke into his car right outside his house in the city where he lives.

There are plenty of very nice areas of Memphis for those who are junior to me. For the rest.... It's a complete war zone.

Any of these... Great advice.

Your advise about commuting is correct for a new hire. But once you get a little bit of seniority you may not have to jumpseat to work. What about the person who can hold double deadheads to their home town. They drive home on the last day and don't have to commute the first day. The domicile living person has to deadhead to and from the domicile wasting lots of time.

There are definite advantages to commuting and living in domicile. Live where you want to live.

Well I grew up in Memphis area around Lakeland and Arlington, lived in Germantown and Piperton also. I now commute and love it and yes Memphis has a huge crime problem and it is extending to the suburbs. I chose where I live for a easy commute and I can drive it in 6 hours if I have too. We have 2 Fedex flights AM and PM on most week days and a outbound to MEM on Saturday and a inbound on Sunday and no flight on Monday. My commute flight is 50 minutes and I now live where there are many more things to do than in MEM and the crime rate is much less.
You can live out in the suburbs in Memphis and drastically lower your chances of crime. Memphis however pushes most entertainment downtown FedEx Forum, Beale Street, ZOO, Orpheum etc are all in extremely high crime areas and your family has to transit extremely high crime areas to attend.
Being from Memphis I used to defend the city and really thought it was not that bad till I moved. Now that I see Memphis in snapshots it is really sad to see what my hometown has become. Memphis used to be City Beautiful and win awards for being clean and safe.
I would recommend bringing the significant other and renting a place first in the Memphis area and see if you like it or not.

I’m sure it has been said, but if not ...

With a little seniority on the 777, you can bid to have only one departure out of Memphis. Of course that is going to be a long trip (10-13 days or so). With good seniority you can have commercial airplane deadheads on the front and back of a trip. So you might not ever see Memphis except for training.

Last months bid pack had 30+ single departure lines. Because of the destinations (India for example) some of those go junior. The vast majority are two departure lines.