Diesel said:minutes are even more screwed up then.
Who is to say how many minutes it takes me to get to work. Mapquest? Was this then agreed to by the pilots. Remember mapquest takes the easiest route not necessarily the quickest. Is it 120 minutes using a ford focus or a porche?
Mileage is a lot less subjective than minutes.
What if a pilot that is grandfathered moves? Does he lose his clause or do they keep it for him because he was special?
This is how it works. They ask you if you can make the drive in two hours. They give people a lot of wiggle room with that too. I know some guys who can do the drive in two hours unless its rush hour then it takes them much more. What the company is looking for is to just keep some kind of control over where people live. As long as you're not an idiot and try to tell them you can make something unreasonable sound like two hours they have been very cool with people. I even know of the company puting people up in a hotel at their base if it was too late to make the drive home.
As far as the few that are still grandfathered, it should be obvious that if you chose to move, it's now your problem to be at a base. It has nothing to do with being special. I know of several people who gave up being able to live at their old place to move to Florida or Denver. Most of those "special" people as you call them lived in the HPN area to begin with as that was once the only base. Off hand I can only think of 2 or 3 people who still live outside of a base.
So, for us minutes is not screwed up. It seems to work quite well. It is one of the policies that I have never heard anyone complain about. If you're fishing to find something we complain about or feel unfair this is not it.