Many air­line pilots choose not to live in their airline’s bases for many dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Most are due to the loca­tion such as Chicago, New York, etc. These are large cities and not every per­son is cut out to live in cer­tain locations.

Unlike other pro­fes­sions, air­line pilots can live in one loca­tion and com­mute via their air­line or another air­line to their base. Some com­mutes are bet­ter than oth­ers, but most add a con­sid­er­able amount of time to a pilot’s work week and espe­cially when flights can­cel or bad weather. Some pilots com­mute from the West Coast to the East Coast for their air­line job.

I com­muted for almost a year when my base was closed and I made it work, often com­ing in the day before to make sure I made my duty-in time. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this for a long period of time. Typ­i­cally, the pilots that com­mute indi­cate that it does wear them out.

Some air­lines have good com­mut­ing lan­guage in their pilot con­tracts and some don’t. If you can get on with an air­line that has a good con­tract, can make life much bet­ter. Some­times the con­tract indi­cates that if the pilot has two open flights that will get them there for their show time is the min­i­mum to try for. If the pilot doesn’t get on the two flights, they will not be penalized.

When I was an aspir­ing air­line pilot I thought com­mut­ing would be great and I was think­ing of all the places I could live. After join­ing an air­line to start my air­line career, I lived in base. I real­ized it was going to be a long time before I could hold a sched­ule that would allow me to com­fort­ably com­mute to work. After liv­ing in base, I real­ized how much bet­ter it was for me to be able to drive to the air­port. I could also bid for trips that were good sched­ules, but were not good for the pilot that com­mutes, exam­ple early duty times.

If you are pur­su­ing an air­line career I would rec­om­mend not to count on com­mut­ing. It may work for you, but it may not. Com­mut­ing is not for every air­line pilot. I per­son­ally like as much time at home I can get and I enjoyed hav­ing more sched­ule options.

Airlinepilotfacts.com is here to give you, the pilot, an inside look to a career as an air­line pilot.