Recent advances in the "Low Cost Ethos" business model permeate virtually every aspect of the industry. As an example, one operator now has virtually mandated commuting or alternately moving cities in order to gain promotion or even change aircraft type within rank. The irony is, it's training costs are out of control BECAUSE everyone is required to attend one of the two original main bases to actually do the training. All because they tried to and save hotel costs for overnights. A clusterf#ck of epic proportions. The law of unintended consequences punishes both the operator and crew, a negative sum game.
This operator has, in effect seven bases for 80 domestic aircraft. It also interleaves two other non interchangable types into the "Group" domestic operation, and looks like introducing a third! No economies of scale, no cross crewing, and highly inefficient unable to utilise pilots annual stick hour quota's in these peripheral operations.
It has made the same error for it's international fleet with a huge number of permutations for promotion and bases upgrade paths . As a consequence, there is going to be a revolving door of training expenses will only continue, and people will be commuting some place they don't want to be.
The record personally relayed to me is 5 bases in about 7 years, and a lot of unhappiness.