When airline people mention "commuting," it does not mean the same thing that it does to an office worker. Airline employees -- especially pilots and flight attendants -- often live a great distance away from their base, and they "commute" by hopping a ride on a plane.
They can do this because they can fly for little or no cost, and because they often can arrange their schedules so that they have enough time off between trips to travel these long distances.
Why they do it varies, but most often it seems that they do it so as not to uproot their partners and families when transferred to a different base. Or, the cost of living near their base is very high, so they choose to live somewhere less expensive.
If you are a commuter -- or thinking about becoming a commuter -- there's an article about this topic in the Seattle Times (reprinted from the New York Times) that you might like to have a look at. It talks about a growing problem for airline commuters: fewer flights, and fuller flights.
Read the article, and see if any of this sounds familiar: Increasingly full planes hit airline crews close to home - Seattle Times
