This is pretty remarkable. A college student spent an entire academic year living in Los Angeles while attending school in the Bay Area. And no, he wasn’t taking online classes, but rather attended all his classes in person, and didn’t even miss a single class.
Student commutes from Los Angeles to the Bay Area
As flagged by @zainman, a Reddit user shared his experience living in Los Angeles while commuting to the University of California at Berkeley for all his classes. His logic was that he previously lived in Los Angeles, and was attending a one year program. He knew that after the program was done, he’d move back to Los Angeles, because his previous employer would hire him once again.
He had a place to live in Los Angeles rent-free, and he tried to avoid the high rent costs in the Bay Area. So he made the decision to commute by plane for all his classes. He was able to schedule his classes so that most weeks he only had to commute 3x, though for a couple of weeks he had to commute 5x.
He booked all of his tickets for the fall 2022 semester in April and May of 2022, while he booked all of his tickets for the spring 2023 semester in November 2022. Most tickets were booked using Alaska Mileage Plan miles and Southwest Rapid Rewards points. He’d rebook the tickets if there were sales, to bring the cost down.
He would book tickets for each weekday, just in case he needed to go on those days, and then would cancel them shortly before the travel period. He would also always book the cheapest ticket of the day, and then use same day flight changes (based on his elite status) to get the schedule he wanted. Amazingly enough, he never missed a class.
His daily commute was 4-5 hours in each direction
The student explained that typically his door-to-door commute between his home in Los Angeles and classroom in Berkeley was four to five hours in each direction.
For the fall semester, his first class was at 10AM on Mondays and Wednesdays, and at 8AM on Fridays. For the 10AM class, he’d wake up at 3:40AM, take the 6AM Alaska flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, have breakfast in the lounge at SFO, and then take BART to campus. For the 8AM class, he’d wake up at 3:30AM, and take the 5:30AM Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Oakland.
Meanwhile for the spring semester, his first class was at 11AM on Mondays, and at 12PM on Wednesdays and Fridays. For all those classes he’d usually wake up at 5:40AM, and take an 8:20AM Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Oakland.
In the other direction, he’d usually take a flight back home at 6-7PM, though on some days he’d take a flight after 9PM, if there were events after class.
How much did this commuting cost?
Probably my favorite part of this story is how precisely he calculated the cost of this commute.
For the fall 2022 semester, he took a total of 63 trips, 138 flights, and flew 55,593 miles. He spent 45,972 minutes on his commute, equivalent to nearly 32 full days. As far as the cost goes:
- In terms of cash, this cost him $3,812.83, including spending $1,366.06 on Alaska, $1,033.75 on gas, $563.80 on BART, $380.85 on Southwest, $370 on parking, $42.80 on United, $39.96 on inflight Wi-Fi, and $15.60 on Avianca
- In terms of points, he redeemed 307,500 Alaska miles, 43,732 Southwest points, 6,500 Avianca miles, and 5,500 United miles
For the spring 2023 semester, he took a total of 51 trips, 100 flights, and flew 36,496 miles. He spent 29,983 minutes on his commute, equivalent to nearly 21 full days. As far as the cost goes:
- In terms of cash, this cost him $1,779.82, including spending $914.52 on gas, $377.38 on Southwest, $186.03 on Alaska, $150 on parking, $107.49 on BART, $28.50 on United, and $15.90 on Spirit
- In terms of points, he redeemed 113,213 Southwest points and 100,000 Alaska miles
Bottom line
Someone commuted from Los Angeles to the Bay Area for all classes for an entire academic year in order to avoid paying rent in the Bay Area. What a fascinating and wild story. I especially love how much data he shared, both regarding the expenses incurred, along with just how long the commute was.
As it turns out, this person has also written a trip report on FlyerTalk about his experience. I’m not sure how I missed that up until now.
What do you make of this unusual college commute?
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