We're married airline pilots. Free travel is a major perk, but it sometimes feels like we're a long-distance couple.

This as-told-to composition is according to a conversation alongside Tyler Bell, 28, a archetypal authoritative at JetBlue Airways, who is wed to Jenn Hoare, 33, a archetypal authoritative at Breeze Airways. It has been edited for clarity and length. All cockpit photos were taken in accordance alongside applicable national regulations and business policies.

My wife, Jenn, and I lately had an different date night: Better Buzz, a coffee shop inner the San Diego airport. Not idyllic, but our finest choice as two operating airline pilots.

Our trips overlapped, barely. She had period between flights, so I arrived first to encounter her before mine. We spent an hr catching up complete coffee before going our distinct ways.

While our hectic escape schedules can frequently create us awareness akin we're in a long-distance marriage, we get to live our flying dreams and travel the world together for free.

We met at an airfield and got wed in a hangar

Jenn began her aviation occupation in 2016 as a JetBlue flight attendant and was encouraged by the pilots she met to regard flying.

She went on to complete aviator training at the escape academy in Massachusetts anywhere I was an instructor. My involvement in flying began as a toddler, and I became an instructor following years of training and flying small planes.

It wasn't until following Jenn got her pilot's licence that we started dating, hiking in the Berkshires and taking abbreviated trips together. She eventually joined Breeze Airways, and I now fly for JetBlue Airways.

In 2025, we wed at the New England Air Museum in Connecticut, by Bradley International Airport near Hartford. It's lone natural we'd have our wedding at an airport.

We held our ceremony, cocktails, and reception throughout the museum's 100,000 quadrate feet of connected hangars, surrounded by additional than 100 historic aircraft. Signature drinks were served from galley carts.

We're long-distance one week and nonstop together the next

We divided our period between our Boston-area flat alongside our two cats, Ellery and Noogit, and squad hotels throughout the Americas.

We power expend five direct days together at home, afterward go a week without seeing all other. We the two love our jobs, but it's akin toggling between a long-distance association and being tied at the hip.

Every month, we obstacle off birthdays, holidays, and family events whenever bidding for trips, yet workdays heap up in between, and escape delays, cancellations, or climate disruptions can average we sometimes don't create it residence at all.

It's not different for one of us to arrive residence as the another heads out the door.

Still, as pilots, we can rotate a lengthy overnight into a mini-vacation: Jenn formerly joined me for my 28-hour layover in Aruba between flights.

Shared interests and overcommunicating assistance us create it work

Among aviators, there's a average understanding that a aviator career can be difficult on marriages.

We've all sat next to pilots in the cockpit telling stories of damaged promises, financial strain, and divorces. We started our marriage by committing not to rotate into one of those statistics.

If we create one mistake, we're apt to over-communicate. It may not audio romantic, but discussing bidding plans and escape patterns in airfield coffee shops keeps us restricted and the data flowing.

Fortunately, we portion akin interests.

As Jenn points out, "Having shared values, interests, and hobbies is key: We the two really akin being active, skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer, and affection to travel."

Free flights average spontaneous trips all complete the world

One of the finest perks of the job is that we get standby journey benefits that let us fly for free, paying lone a small listing fee and taxes. Because seats aren't guaranteed, we scheme onward alongside plans A, B, and C — but it's value it.

That's how we spent 12 days in the Faroe Islands this spring, living out of a camper van and hiking. We traveled to Italy this summer, dining our way through southernmost Italy and afterward hiking in the Dolomites.

We fair returned from our delayed honeymoon to Tanzania, Africa, anywhere we summited Mount Kilimanjaro. For seven days, we climbed the Machame path alongside nine another hikers and a squad of guides, porters, and cooks.

Summit night brought eight hours of steep, dusty trudging in the dreary at 14 degrees Fahrenheit, alongside all respiration a battle at nearly 19,000 feet. It was the hardest item either of us has always done, but we reached the top on our archetypal wedding anniversary.

We initially imagined going on a safari for our 25th anniversary, but as Jenn reminds me, "Why wait? This adventure is finest done whenever we are at our bodily peak."

Still, we anticipation to commencement a family someday and acknowledge that our manner volition change. Until then, it's fair us, our cats, and a lengthy catalog of places to visit.