How long are airline pilots away from home

Regular marriage is hard enough—being married to a pilot can become simply ridiculous. How would you fly to Tucson from Dallas? One flight, right? Maybe two? It is rarely glamorous, and almost always logistically difficult. Our kids are often subjected to some pretty tough hour travel days. On the upside? None of us would have visited nearly the number of places without this particularly perk of being married to a pilot.

The person whose life you envy may well be envying yours. Pilots are Gone a Lot Pilots work the trips that they are given. They also participate in rigorous recurrent training and qualification. Pilots operate in a hour, 7 days a week, days per year environment. They often set out to work as most people are heading home for the day or getting ready to sleep.

When arriving at a destination, the crew hotel environment can be a critical element to a pilot getting sufficient rest before he or she reports for the next flight assignment.

Becoming a pilot involves arduous training, dedication and years of building experience. Once a pilot is working for an airline, their life is sure to include significant time away from family and friends. This includes holidays, which can be some of an airline's busiest times for transporting passengers, which translates into a higher demand for pilots to operate those flights.

Even where they live can be determined by the demands of the job. Before becoming a member of the Air Canada Pilots Association, the average pilot may have moved up to four times to secure a flying job. Some hotels that we stay at are notoriously bad, but most are pretty good.

I hear the hotels are much better at a major. Plus, my layovers are either 12 or 24 hours long. Not much you can do with a 12 hour layover. You just have to make time for it. I always found cool things to do, see or eat, had some amazing experiences and never had an issue with US times zones.

That a great response Adam. It seems that it really depends on the person. Compared to another pilot at Delta I know which flies the out of LAX to more international destinations.

You said you would be switching to the so you could be home every night. There is such a thing?!? Could you tell me more? We fly the from island to island, there are am and pm schedules but there are no overnights. Not one. When I showed up for training things had changed and there was only a slot and I was not happy. As I said I had no desire to fly the Interisland.