The married father of two, who commutes long distances from Texas to Arizona for work, finds his military experience and understanding family make the long journeys easier.
Fort Worth resident Dennis Dabney has been flying to Phoenix for work since he was promoted at his company in 2022. According to a report from Business Insider.
The 57-year-old program director and his family first moved to the Lone Star State in 2019 after their company asked them to relocate from Virginia.
But when a promotion brought her to work in Phoenix, Dabney refused to force her two teenage children and her 88-year-old mother, who lives with her family, to move again.
Instead, he and his wife bought an apartment in Phoenix and lived there during the week, spending $20,000 a year flying home on low-cost airlines like Spirit and Frontier Airlines most weekends.
Dabney makes the two-and-a-half-hour flight home every other Friday when he’s off, and sometimes his family comes to visit him in Arizona.
“I couldn’t have done this without the support of my family and my wife,” he told Business Insider, “and that’s been so important to the decisions I’ve made over the years about where to go and where to work.”
The father also said it was important to have “open communication” with his family.
“Things change, attitudes change, and you have to know when things are getting out of hand and when things are going well,” he told the magazine.
Before this extreme commute, Dabney drove five hours to Louisiana each week for his other job at the company, but would come home on weekends to be with his family.
Dabney served in the Air Force for 26 years, so the family was used to moving around a lot.
“We moved a lot, but after we got to Texas, the family sent a clear message that they didn’t want to move again,” he told the outlet.
He credits his background in the Air Force with making him accustomed to frequent travel, helping him make his latest super commute as smooth as possible.
“This is about learning how to use my mindset, my background and all of that to create the quality of life that I want,” he told the outlet.
Overall, he called the experience “very satisfying.”
