Originally Posted by RyanP

It would have to be DFW or ORD to even be somewhat realistic.. but both will be miserable. Especially on reserve. Your life would suck. That is 3.5 hours to DFW or 4 hours to ORD, jammed in an extremely uncomfortable jumpseat or crammed in the back. It may not sound that bad now, but try doing it twice a week, especially after adding 12 hours of a work day to it and another couple hours running around the airport waiting for commuting flights. it makes for many 18-20 hour days, and you constantly feel like crap. Plus those flight are generally overbooked anyway and difficult to commute one.

Going from the west coast 2 time zones east to your domicile sucks, BAD. Trust me I've done it for a while. You need to leave your house at like 4am just to make an afternoon departure at your domicile. Morning departures are impossible to make with the time zone changes unless you take the red-eye with no sleep, or go the day before. Then you will fly until very late typically the first day. But being new, you will never even be able to get late afternoon departures anyway. So you will pretty much always have to fly out the day before your trip or reserve starts and you will be LUCKY if you can get on a flight home the day you finish. Unikely on reserve. So you will be losing 1-2 days off a week, pretty much guaranteed. (when you only have 2 or 3 to begin with).

Also, MANY of the flights end up laying over in the east coast time zone from those domiciles. ORD being worse.
Seriously, this is something to think about that many people don't consider.. you are use to west coast time. You are going to get plenty of short overnights here with a 5am east coast van time at the hotel. That is a 1:00 AM wake up call for you to be loading up in the van at 5 according to your body clock.. you will never be able to get any good sleep as a commuter from the west coast going east. Basically you need to be able to fall asleep for the night at like 5pm "your time" to feel decent, (which is virtually impossible for most people). Pretty much all of us doing it have serious problems with sleep and it's miserable.. and I'm senior and get get pretty much whatever trip I want with mostly later showtimes. If I was junior trying to do this, getting all the crappy trips, I can't even imagine how horrendous that would be. There is a bunch of commuters from the west now with LAX closing and they all hate it. It's just too far, and the multiple time zones not working in your favor make it much worse.

My advice for someone new and junior from the west. Move to your base, or at least move closer.. or go to Skywest. I would not recommend that commute on my worst enemy. If you are from California, you would probably like ORD, NYC, or MIA living a lot better than DFW.

Originally Posted by embraer

This is all true as long as you are junior. With seniority any commute is fine. In fact I just finished up a trip ( DFW based ) with a Captain who commutes from LA. He is a line holder and couldn't be happier with life. He said he has zero intention of ever moving to Dallas.

So like I said a west coast commute gets better as your seniority goes up. With all the movement anticipated that shouldn't be a problem.

Originally Posted by SongMan

What's wrong with DFW?

Originally Posted by eaglefly

Nothing if you like scrub brush and gas station minimarts. I always enjoy leaving Texas more than arriving there. Thankfully, neither occurs very often.

Originally Posted by eaglefly

Nothing if you like scrub brush and gas station minimarts. I always enjoy leaving Texas more than arriving there. Thankfully, neither occurs very often.

Originally Posted by Red Forman

You obviously haven't seen much or been to many places in Texas then.

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Yes, Texas is very diverse, from the hill country to the forested south, to swamps to dry desert, yet it's not nearly as diverse as WA, OR, NM, AZ, or CA. It can be incredibly frustrating trying to find food in many mid-sized cities that only have wal-marts, as they tend to not carry many of the thing you can get in other states at supermarkets. It's strange, but I guess you never know what you are missing until you experience it. Texas has lax gun laws, but not as lax as AZ. Although it's got plenty of outdoor activities, fishing, boating, hunting, it doesn't lend itself as well to outdoor activities that keep you fit. You are pretty well "locked in" the metro areas of Dallas and Ft Worth, without as many varied parks and recreation areas nearby as say Phoenix.

For the record, I've been all over Texas, from Amarillo to El Paso to Houston, to Brownsville, to Dallas to Wichita Falls, and many many more places, all by ground.