Should husband have got taxi at 4am after finishing work late?

Before I respond,it depends - do you work full time, part-time, WFM or not at all outside the home OP? Because that matters.

Not a single person has expressed concern that she's caring for multiple kids and driving around with them on virtually zero sleep.

I'd really hope she wouldn't be so stupid to put her kids at risk like that but given her attitude to her husband lack of sleep perhaps not.

Yes he could possible have got in at 4 am and then done 3 hour taxi to home airport then called another taxi wait around for it 7 am on no sleep for 15 minute drive home waited for it to turn up rather than sleep in a hotel overnight.

It's not that I would not do that but it would have to be a really big one off event for my spouce to put myself though that for.

He should have come home imo, I guess different for pilots as they are used to different sleep patterns/places, but most people sleep better in their own bed and want to see their family asap. On choosing to stay in a hotel, he should have got in touch with the airline/taxi firm, etc to get home earlier to see family and not muck up your plans - which I'm sure are often bent around his job. I'd be really surprised if the airline booked the transport and hadn't asked him what time he wanted to be collected.

But by your timings the most sleep he would have got at home would have been five hours and realistically less because you needed him to be able to look after the kids at that point so he would need time to shower and get dressed. You are being very very unreasonable. Is there some backstory where he does nothing and you're fed up with it? It's this the final straw?

If not I can't understand why you are being so stubborn on this.

I imagine being a pilot is a very intense job.
He was probably exhausted and needed to rest. Unless is was a life or death emergency which needed him home. YABVU

Riding in a taxi for 3 hours when I was already tired and then needing to drive would be an unsafe decision.

I would not sleep in a car driven by a stranger. That is not a good plan. It is a perfect way to be assaulted.

How much decent quality sleep do you think he’d get in a taxi at 4am, and then while he has a house full of small children - including a poorly baby?

I get that it’s an annoyance but think it depends on how long his flight was? If it was a 2 hour flight then he should have made the effort to go home, if it was 8 hours then that’s a long time to be focused and must be exhausting, I don’t think I could face a 3.5 trip home after that either

yab hugely unreasonable. His job is safety critical and rest is important. You think he can sleep to order for 3 hours in a taxi then wake up to drive home then sleep again?! don't be ridiculous! He made a sensible decision to sleep over.

He was very tired after focusing on his very responsible job until the early hours of the morning, and you expected him to get by on 3 hours' sleep (if he had managed to get to sleep) in a taxi. I think it's reasonable to want to have a proper night's sleep after a hard day at work which ends very late. And if you don't get a proper night's sleep, catch-up sleep during the day isn't the same thing and you're likely to remain adversely affected for a couple of days afterwards. Not ideal for a pilot. Maybe he takes the responsibility of being in charge of an aircraft more seriously than you do. And presumably most of the rest of the crew were air stewards and stewardesses, not pilots.

I think it makes a difference if he'd just piloted a 14 hour flight from the other side of the world, or a short hop of 1 hour. His level of knackeredness would be totally different! Sleeping in a car for 3 hours is also not proper restful sleep.

That the thing I would be questioning, not so much the overnight at the hotel. Why so late in the day?

I would prefer the hotel too, especially after such a long day. Couldn't he have got a taxi before 2pm? Xx

Agreed, but it really does sound like there was ample time for him to get decent quality and quantity of sleep once home before his next flight.

Lol, the only people either might kill is on the road because marketing executive or pilot, they are on their way HOME. He's done his flying, the other dude has done his marketing. On the way home the job is irrelevant. I can only assume you have either not read or not understood the situation here.

yanbu for being disappointed to miss your event but equally he is not unreasonable for sleeping at the hotel

No you’re not right to be mad imo. He’s just worked a full day, it’s 3am and you then want him to spend 3 hours dozing sitting up in a taxi followed by a day where he doesn’t really get to sleep because he has to ferry kids around.

He was probably exhausted so he slept. Sleep and health comes above events imo.

You can be upset that you missed the event without blaming him for something that was works fault. It’s just one of those things.

This!

I pushed through tiredness many times. Single mother, solely looked after the kids 24/7 through their entire childhood. I wouldn’t have wanted to take a three hour taxi journey home, followed by a drive if there was a hotel close by, but I would have weighed up the pros and cons before making a decision.

Having friends with pilot husbands, I can see both sides. Their work makes it hard to be there for their families, and they need to prioritise the times that it really matters to their partner or it doesn't happen. That's why I think you are annoyed OP and I get it. And to be brutally honest, he earns enough that if he wasn't feeling up to driving the 15 minutes home from the airport and the drop offs and back to work the next day, he could afford taxis without any drama... and he would have done that if it mattered to him. Airline staff are experts at sleeping in unusual places, he 100% could have slept in the taxi. It sounds like he opted for the easy life and left OP to pick up the slack, and if that happens a lot I would be one pissed off wife.

If it doesn't usually play out like this, then I'd put it down to the usual downsides to being married to a pilot.

Being a pilot is not irrelevant. Marketing executives don’t kill people if they are tired, pilots do.

Again, articulated way better than I managed to do. Totally agree.

Well he could have got the taxi home instead of to his car, and picked the car up later once he'd slept properly. But I don't blame him for wanting to sleep immediately, in peace vs potentially being awake another 3 hours and 20 and then being pestered all morning by kids and household noise.

Indeed! He was so proud to declare that he was a man and not a jealous woman as well 😂 I don’t even understand why men are on here anyway. We can’t have anything that they don’t want to rule or tell us we’re doing wrong. Haven’t they got incel correspondence to deal with?

I think if you’re annoyed about this there are bigger issues in play. If you felt content and supported this wouldn’t be an issue, you’d take it at face value: he was tired, he stayed in a hotel to sleep. The fact that you’re annoyed suggests you suspect him of shirking, or not wanting to be around you and the kids as much as his colleagues do their families.

I’d rather DP came home rested than a bit early. But then DP goes away/out quite rarely, and works extremely sociable hours.