Because airline crew members can make as little as $17,000 a year but are often based in expensive hub cities like New York, they often commute from a less expensive home city to the base airport. The airlines do not provide these "commuters" with sleeping accommodations, so commuting pilots are often forced to make their own arrangements when they need to sleep away from home before a flight. They sleep on chairs and couches in airport "crew rooms" -- even when airline rules expressly forbid it -- or in pilot "crash pads," found near major airports across the country. The crash pads, like this one in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York, near LaGuardia airport, offer pilots the chance to sleep in tiers of bunk beds in crowded bedrooms for a small fee.