Airlines divide their pilots up between cities, and refer to those cities as “crew bases”, or “domiciles”. An airline can have as few or as many crew bases as it sees fit. At the regional airline level, crew bases are determined by the schedules of its main line partner. In the case of Air Wisconsin, USAirways’ schedules influence the location of the pilot bases. Pilots generally start and end their trip sequences at their assigned crew base, with few exceptions.

Regional airlines change their crew bases quite often, as contracts with mainline carriers come and go. It is not atypical for a regional airline to fly for a certain mainline carrier for a few years, and, when the contract is not renewed, switch to whichever airline the regional/express carrier can form a partnership with. This practice leads to changing crew bases and potentially uprooting pilots quite frequently. For example, Air Wisconsin flew for United Airlines up until the fall of 2005 with crew bases in Appleton, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; Dulles, Washington; and Denver, Colorado. For a brief time, Air Wisconsin also had a partnership with Air Tran Airways, which resulted in a crew base in Atlanta. When the relationship with Air Tran terminated, the Atlanta crew base closed. Following the end of Air Wisconsin’s relationship with United, a new code share was established with US Airways, with bases in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; and Norfolk, Virginia. This change displaced the every single pilot, which for the most part had been settled in the West and Midwest portions of the country and resulted in new flying assignments from a city on the East Coast. The change in base locations forced approximately 95% Air Wisconsin pilots to have to commute on an airplane to work for at least some period of time.

Commuting halfway or all the way across the United States is not at all like jumping in your car or the city bus and getting to work a few minutes or a few hours later. In most cases, it means going to work the day before a pilot has to actually report for duty. A pilot that is not actively flying or deadheading (traveling on Company business) on an airplane flies on standby status only, which means he or she gets on the flight only if there are seats not taken by paying passengers, or deadheading crew. There is a tradition amongst the airline profession of allowing pilots to fly on any airline (not just that commuting pilot’s airline) with the airline’s and the Captain’s approval on a case by case basis. If all of the cabin seats are full, there is usually one or two seats on the flight deck that a commuter can sit in, again only with the airline’s and the Captain’s approval. With that in mind, a commuter has to plan for a flight that will have a seat open that gets to their base in time to report for duty at whatever time they are supposed to work. Sounds simple, right?  Not really.

If a pilot’s schedule requires him to be at work early in the morning, the pilot usually has to leave their home the day or evening before. The further a pilot lives from his base, the fewer flight options he has for commuting “same day” given the time it takes to fly from the pilot’s home city to his or her base. Add any weather delays, cancelled flights, delayed flights, or seat disappearing because of a full load, adds an order of magnitude of complexity to the issue. And just because the pilot successfully commutes to work the day before doesn’t mean the problem’s over. Having to go to work the day before means the pilot has to buy a hotel room on his own dime, or live in what’s called a “crash pad” (an apartment or house that is shared by many pilots to keep costs down) so he or she can get adequate rest before starting work the next day.

The Federal Airline Administration, the government program that oversees all US aviation matters has identified pilot fatigue as one of the primary causes of airline accidents and incidents. ALPA, which is short for Air Line Pilot’s Association, (the largest airline pilot union in the United States) concurs with this statement.

The FAA limits the time a pilot can be scheduled to fly in a 24 hour period to 8 hours of actual aircraft flight time. That doesn’t mean a pilot flies 8 straight hours and is done. A pilot can legally be “On Duty” for 16 hours per day. Flights are typically scheduled to arrive at an airport at a certain time, and leave as soon as 30 minutes later. The time spent in between scheduled flights is taken up by such duties as helping to clean the aircraft, acquiring paperwork for the next flight, doing a safety inspection of the aircraft to ensure airworthiness, checking weather reports, and coordinating with gate agents, dispatchers, ground service personnel, and air traffic control. There are no meal breaks scheduled in a typical day. If a pilot is lucky or fortunate enough to be far ahead of schedule throughout his or her day there might just be a break of more than 30 minutes where he can grab some quick airport food and either run back to the flight deck and eat it on the go, or perhaps sit briefly and try to relax. This goes on for the duration of a pilot’s trip sequence, which can range from either two to six days in duration, but generally amounts to four days, as the same FAA rule that mandates that a pilot can only be scheduled up to 8 hours in 24 hour period mandates a maximum of 30 scheduled flight hours in a seven day period for safety reasons.

Airlines can build schedules that are “commuter friendly” with relative ease. All they have to do, in the simplest sense, is have a pilot start work later in the day, and end work around the that same time on the last day of the trip. This would allow for a few more flight options on Day 1 of the trip, and a chance or two to get home on the last day of the trip. Air Wisconsin, in the name of “efficiency and cost savings”—none of which is quantified for the pilots to understand—does not choose to do this for the majority of the pilots it employs. So, with few exceptions, pilots at Air Wisconsin commute to work the day before their trip…let’s say a 4 day trip...finish late on Day 4 (after their last flight home has already left) and have to spend another night in a hotel/crashpad/crew room and commute home on their day off. If the pilot’s monthly schedule is comprised of 4 on/3 off…that leaves 1day per week that the pilot is home with his or her family.