I hear ya, and JB is closer to half and half commuters and locals. And I do believe that commutability trip-mix should be highly variable between bases, as like you said the bases have very different dynamics. I'm in favor of annual surveys, base by base, with requirements to honor each bases trip preferences.

Our company and union put out a pairings survey recently where they are least pretended to care about making better pairings, and commutability was a notable part of the survey. And if the airline wants to minimize the number of non-locals that leave the company, which they have are learning choice but to care about, they know they have to make pairings survivable for guys that don't live in base.

base variability is huge. The current trip mix requirements in our CBA are great for JFK. They suck for every other base.

Agree. I think we can get much more targeted with our trip/QOL requirements, and the result will be better for the pilots, the company and recruiting/retention.

Yes I agree. Lots of 4 and 5 day trips in a base that is mostly local is miserable. A bunch of turns and two days in a commuter heavy base equally miserable.

I will say this: As someone that commuted for the better part of 8 years you should move to a base. Every excuse you can think of doesn’t outweigh living in base. The only good reason I might think of is a divorce and being in your kids lives requires a commute bc your good for nothing ex refuses to move.

So, I’ve commuted for 18 years, the 7 years in the middle I didn’t commute I was 91k. First 7 wasn’t by choice. The last 8 years definitely are by choice, we could have moved to a base, but moved somewhere else. My commute probably costs me around 10 hours per trip. So just at rig that is 3 hours of pay per trip, 4 times a month. Add some missed premium, I would probably make about $50k more living in base being gone the same amount of time, or have another 150 hours at home. And it is definitely worth it to me. I do things at home every day that I could not do if I didn’t commute. Not divorced, but definitely would be if we didn’t live where we do!

If moving means getting divorced I think that's a bad sign my man lol.

reason for divorce would both being unhappy living somewhere else. We’ve survived 5 moves over the past 25 years….

I've lived in base before. It's great. Still not moving to one of JB/NK bases. Like where I live, what we have and what we do. I'm far from miserable, but want to make things as easy as can be for those of us that commute, AND those that live in base. We can do both with proper surveys and proper rules.
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The other option is to really tighten up the TAFB rig. So that time away is the key driver in trip pay. That way they can't just stuff more flying into the first and last day of multi-day trips to defeat the daily rig. If they want to add more flying, it will cost them even more yet. That benefits almost all of us, as there are locals that can't hold shorter trips, or bases where they don't build shorter trips anyway.

Nothing says we can't do better than the industry standard 1 to 3.5 TAFB rig. We literally hold the keys to the single operating certificate, there is no merger without our JCBA blessing. A much improved TAFB rig could be a big part of driving pay and QOL increases, among many other things.

nothing says we can’t keep our better than industry standard drop to zero you seem to always want to $h&t on