Aside from what everyone else has said, toss that $700 down the drain in crash pads, hotels, commuting costs, eating, etc. 4x6 day trips is 24 days gone. How much can you enjoy Hawaii or being retired in 6 days per month. No F'ing way I would do that commute. Even as a senior guy. 6+ hours in a 737 Jumpseat on the tail end of a four day? Make it a red eye to boot? Then spend a day home recovering, one more day off, commute back again. Lather rinse repeat. CA taxes blow, no two ways about it. But there are areas around Pt. Mugu with lower prop taxes, nice areas, access to base, good beaches, drive to LAX etc. The other thing worth mentioning is that living in base, the income opportunity is significantly higher. Easily offsetting increased taxes.

As far as Denver, it was mentioned but bears repeating... Hub to hub legs will have 20-30 nonrevs all trying to commute to other bases, fighting for a handful of seats.

Riiiiight?........He is gonna leave a major, any major to go to Atlas.....how's that amalgamated contract working out for you Cliff? As usual the OPPOSITE of what you suggest would be the most prudent course of action. Sheesh!!!!!

Hey did you consider EWR? It has a "tropical" feel to the weather a few months out of the year and they do have smaller cockroaches than Hawaii.

Truthfully, if you can put up with the traffic IAH is not a bad place and you can live in some great communities within an hour drive of the airport. Taxes are ok in TX, land a whole lot cheaper and a whole bunch of choices for schools. But, the weather gets severe occasionally and a bit hot and humid even when compared to the Islands.

Best choice is not to commute.

BTW I'm one of those DEN-SFO commuters with lots of seniority and I quite often end up in the cockpit (over 50%). You will most likely have to come out the day before and spend an average of $100 a night for a hotel room in SFO and LAX just a little less.

Why would he be working 24 days?

He wouldn't. But do the math if he works four 4-day trips a month that are not same day commutable. ;)

Have you considered Lake Tahoe/Reno/western Nevada? Yeah, it's a 3+ hour drive, but no state income tax and beautiful places to live. Alternatively, Las Vegas is an easy commute to LAX with us, SWA and several others providing a total of about 30 flights a day.

Congrats and welcome! Lots of good suggestions on various places but it can't be repeated enough that commuting makes this a full time job. But if you are going to try commuting, and i did for the first two years because of dash 3 finishing HS, find some friends or make some friends to crash pad with who are in the same situation so you can learn the game. United Reserve has a lot of gamesmanship and rules. You are almost never going to have a reserve period where you don't get at least a short call. So you are going to commute at least 3-4x a month. You can bid 6 day reserve blocks but others senior to you have the same opportunity. You have the first day nothing before 1000LBT rule, or you can pick up a later shortcall or you can aggressive pickup a later show. But if you do that you can get to base and sit in the Crashpad or get sent on a late returning 4 day. Not bad if you are in a 5 day reserve period and go back to long call, but not great if you are done or in a 6 day reserve period. A bit complex to start, but critical if you want to have any quality of life on days off not looking at the loads on employeeres. i commuted DFW-IAH for two years, and drove 90% of the time. It got old, but less stressful than the OJ running through airports commuting to reserve show. Be aware of very unpredicatable weather slow downs in SFO.

Bottom line move to a driveable to base location.

Again congrats and welcome.

Not to dog hump this, but he brings up good points with reserve rules. Commuting from HI guarantees you'll have to redeye in the night prior at the latest, day prior to be safe. On probation being out of position is not a game you want to play.

I commuted to reserve in EWR from the west coast for a bit, and averaged 8 days home a month. You'll be doing the same distance/time zones, with far fewer options and much much more competition (lots of vacation travelers, you'll be junior to most of them). Best advice would be to try it for a few months, see how it works out, go from there. QOL doesn't get any better than living in base however. Driving to work, and commuting are two entirely different jobs.

You're situational awareness is borderline alarming! I can't understand why a commute from Hawaii to ANC to make less and be gone on longer stretches of time would be a good idea compared to a California commute that pays more and has far better quality of life on the job. According to Flightaware, Alaska runs one flight a day between HNL-ANC which is 5.5 hours long. Meanwhile, HNL-LAX has over 20 flights a day including cargo carriers doing the run. Average flight time is 5 hours. What am I missing here?

"Penny wise and pound foolish". Ex-military guys (I am retired Navy reserves) have no idea as to how variable compensation is at United based on location. Within my own class (20 years seniority) there is a huge difference (more than 80k/year) in pay based mainly on proximity to a "junior" base vs. commuting from a cabin in paradise. This doesn't even begin to address quality of life. There is nothing better than sitting reserve for 2 months while coaching your kids sports teams and being used only once for a 3 day trip to Paris.