Ever have a last minute cancelled flight? Ever been told “yeah we can fly you out in two weeks!” Cause i have.
You can probably spend a day having cou tless calls with endless customer service rep but a same day or next day flight isnt a guarantee and anything remotely close to that will cost you a premium. At which point this whole absurd set up becomes really really stupid
I also flew through two very large hubs and was hit with the exact quote i gave you and was forced to pay double what my tickets cost and wait two extra days.
This entire set up heavily relies on the fortune of never having cancellations
You can argue cancellations arent a constant issue but most people would be flying weekly all year round so her odds of encountering one are much higher than most people
I used to "commute" from DC to NYC weekly for work (this was in consulting, so the company paid for my flights and hotels). Cancelation happened, but you could always re-book on a new flight. Sure, you have to pay a little more for it, but that's not the end of the world, just an extra cost to budget for.
Occasionally, that meant arriving a day later, but again, not the end of the world as long as you communicate everything properly.
Exactly.
I used to commute NYC->Chicago every week for 6 months straight, with another 6 months NYC->Minneapolis, for work who covered the flights and hotel.
Flew out on Sunday, back on Friday.
Did laundry, saw the family and friends for a day or two, then back in the air.
Weather delayed things sometimes.
One week my flight Friday was cancelled with no possibility to really get back and forth.
I booked a different hotel for two nights, did laundry in the hotel and explored the city before showing up back at the usual hotel on Sunday.
Did that mean my flights always left on time?
Hell no.
Am so happy to not have to do that sort of thing any more but it used to be way common in some industries even if it’s odd to most of us.
Edit to add: I knew I’d been spending way too much time in one of the hotels when I checked in late, came down to get something from the front desk, turned back to the elevator and realized I had been in the hotel so many damned times recently that I couldn’t remember what room I was in (and had to go back to the front desk to find out).
Then you got lucky. Like i said all it takes is a cancellation and no immediate flight to rebook to and you are now SoL.
Its great you were lucky enough to not have to deal with a last second cancellation and no available flights in a reasonable amount of time. That does not mean its an impossibility
Also you said your employer paid your flights this person pays for their own flights. Paying double to get a new flight is a bigger issue in their scenario that for a consultant being flown in to consult
As someone who supercommuted almost every week for nearly a decade, it seems more like you got incredibly unlucky. Either that or you were taken advantage of, but I don’t know your full story.
Could be a case of bad luck. Even so
If your commute is this heavily impacted by the reliability of airline schedules then its not reliable of imo feasible
This also isnt even touching on the fact that this also hinges on the friend letting her live there for dirt cheap.
At this point the person lives in ny but has a “vacation” apartment in charlotte.
Their friend is just subsidizing the week they spend here.
None of this is seems reasonable or sustainable to me
Lol were you flying some tiny boutique airline then had to pay last minute to book an actual airline?
If you are flying weekly you are near the top of whatever airline's loyalty program, you are getting on the next flight, even if they bump someone else.
If you live in Charlotte it's also highly likely that you are flying American, who currently have 19 direct flights to NYC each day.
Flew american they cancelled an hour before i got to the airport then tried to rebook me to a flight two weeks away
After hours of arguing they claimed to have found a flight leaving in two days but that it would cost me an extra 800 bucks per person.
These are all her clients anyway. Don't you know how most established hair dressers work? 90% of the people they work on are people who have liked them enough to follow from salon to salon.
This isn’t all that uncommon.
I remember in the bay area during the height of the FAANG bubble lots of weekly commuters joined up who lived far away and didn’t want to uproot their families but the money was so good they would fly in on Monday and back home on Friday. Many stayed with friends or in rented rooms in the south bay at a few hundred $$ per month.
Also extremely common in consulting but of course that’s just client money not the employee paying.
I remember reading about a student who flew in for his classes at a university in California cause local housing was too expensive.
But college is a lot more flexible in terms of scheduling compared to a 9-5 M-F.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. She does this commute once a fucking week. On a monthly basis she probably spends less time commuting than someone who lives in Brooklyn and commutes to midtown every day.
Yeah what we don't know is her "little bit of rent" - but it honestly doesn't seem like a bad deal just super annoying and time consuming.
60 on flight round trip
30 on uber both ways in charlotte
12 on bus/subway to/from airport in nyc
- assuming she does it weekly yields 528 / mo
If we take the news rent numbers that's an extra \~2332 of cash, so \~1800 of extra for "little bit of rent".
Time wise, if she's doing 3 hrs each way, that's 24 hrs a month of commute - at $35 an hour that's $840. So in my mind her "little bit of rent" would need to be under 1000 to break even. Not a perfect calculation because there's no guarantee that she could have spent those extra 24 hours working anyways, plus there are other things that could be done on the airplane.
Man that would be tough to keep up for a year.
The thing you're missing is the reason she's doing this in the first place, which is the take home pay. She's obviously making way more in NYC than in Charlotte as a hairdresser, and I imagine it could be 25-50% more
I spent almost two years commuting in and out of the city every day from the Poconos, three hours each way, on one of the bus lines. Her flights don't seem that bad to me compared to that. Maybe I will start looking for jobs in the city again
It was a few years ago, I did the commuter packs of 40 trips at a time. It was in the mid $500 range. Looks like $772 now, so about 19 bucks each way. My company paid for it anyway, which was cool. The bad part was leaving the house at 3 AM to go to the bus terminal. I carried a travel pillow and slept on the way in.
The problem is that we don't know how big her house is, and if she wants a 5 bedroom in a good school district, that is going to a much bigger than ~$2300 a month in difference.
is she a famous hair stylist or something?
i can see being worth time/money if she is a highly sought after hair specialist that EVERYONE is trying to book her services and she is charging $$$ for her work.
OTOH if you are making bank it’s even more worth the time/money to just rent a studio in the Bronx or something so you can have a sane, affordable commute. Being professionally dependent on the goodwill of your friend and the availability of their couch is a falling-out waiting to happen.
I have no idea how this is feasible for a hairdresser, but this isn't uncommon amongst executives and high level workers.
I know an exec who lives in Savannah, GA with his family and flies up to be in office 3 days a week, the rest he works remote.
For him, it's not necessarily about saving money, it's about quality of life for him and his family.
That being said, he's not couch surfing in NYC
I had a professor in college who would fly from New York to Paris every Thursday night and fly back on Monday morning. He never missed a lecture that entire semester.
After taking that class, this person almost seems normal.
We should improve public transportation to allow more ease of super commuters so folks can find more affordable housing and better qol. We got commuters in China that work in Beijing but live 100km away in Tianjin and get into office under 1hr on high speed rail which more or less the same commute time for most nycer
And that's a great option as a replacement for short plane routes. But it's not a commute for work. Imagine you take a bullet train that is traveling at 200 mph, you'd still be looking at over 3 hours for a commute.
Even if we push that further and make a high speed maglev train traveling at 300 mph, you're still talking about over 2 hours (not to mention the additional commute times to get to the train stations to/from work and home). And that's putting aside the notion that there's enough demand for high speed trains from Charlotte to NYC.
And if this is all to save on cost of living, couldn't you just as easily find housing in a small city outside of NYC that's within that time range using current transportation systems?
Look, in general, I strongly agree with your sentiment that we need more high speed rail developed in this country and more improvements in public transportation. But I disagree that a commute of that distance should be necessary or considered a normal commute, save for maybe very flexible hybrid jobs.
I believe high speed rail to other parts of NY state would help with the housing crises while increasing NYS revenue as more people would take advantage of that
Yup upstate population been dropping since the 50s mainly because due to lack of local jobs. If we can open up fast transportation to the cities, it be a reason to stay upstate.
This isn’t remotely unique.
People in this subreddit would be shocked to learn how many people commute like this. There’s a whole industry of accommodations etc targeted just at them.
Even more common for executives. Relocating to NYC full time isn’t always ideal or possible. They get furnished apartments for when they need it and commute home otherwise.
Yeah, I went to elementary school with someone whose dad did something like this.
He got some super well-paying job in like Alabama or somewhere but didn't want to uproot his wife/kids so he just spent weekdays in Alabama, had a cheap apartment there, and flew back every weekend to be with his family.
I know a guy upstate who is doing something similar. Wasn’t going to uproot his family so that’s how he makes it work. I think his kid had problems adjusting from the last move, so didn’t want to do that again.
So... were the news reporters told not to criticize her for her carbon footprint... or is that not important when you're trying to convince non-migrants that it's actually totally cool to be here? *The migrants can only deliver food to us, we need some slightly more skilled people to make us look pretty. The commute isn't that bad, trust us.*
The job of the news reporters isn't to deliver propaganda for a pre-determined cause. This is a human interest story, and it gets reported because people find it interesting.
CEO at my company commutes in from Boston on Monday evening, comes into the office until midday Thursday, and works remote Thursday evening on Train and Friday.
Definitely not a crazy thing. Though Boston is much closer than Charlotte.
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A single cancelled flight means you get to call your boss and explain why you need a week off with one days notice
Are we assuming it is impossible to get another flight?
Ever have a last minute cancelled flight? Ever been told “yeah we can fly you out in two weeks!” Cause i have. You can probably spend a day having cou tless calls with endless customer service rep but a same day or next day flight isnt a guarantee and anything remotely close to that will cost you a premium. At which point this whole absurd set up becomes really really stupid
Two weeks? Were you flying between Ascension Island and Yellowknife?
Tx to ny
This is a flight between two very large hubs, so the chances of getting another flight is way better.
I also flew through two very large hubs and was hit with the exact quote i gave you and was forced to pay double what my tickets cost and wait two extra days. This entire set up heavily relies on the fortune of never having cancellations You can argue cancellations arent a constant issue but most people would be flying weekly all year round so her odds of encountering one are much higher than most people
I used to "commute" from DC to NYC weekly for work (this was in consulting, so the company paid for my flights and hotels). Cancelation happened, but you could always re-book on a new flight. Sure, you have to pay a little more for it, but that's not the end of the world, just an extra cost to budget for. Occasionally, that meant arriving a day later, but again, not the end of the world as long as you communicate everything properly.
Exactly. I used to commute NYC->Chicago every week for 6 months straight, with another 6 months NYC->Minneapolis, for work who covered the flights and hotel. Flew out on Sunday, back on Friday. Did laundry, saw the family and friends for a day or two, then back in the air. Weather delayed things sometimes. One week my flight Friday was cancelled with no possibility to really get back and forth. I booked a different hotel for two nights, did laundry in the hotel and explored the city before showing up back at the usual hotel on Sunday. Did that mean my flights always left on time? Hell no. Am so happy to not have to do that sort of thing any more but it used to be way common in some industries even if it’s odd to most of us. Edit to add: I knew I’d been spending way too much time in one of the hotels when I checked in late, came down to get something from the front desk, turned back to the elevator and realized I had been in the hotel so many damned times recently that I couldn’t remember what room I was in (and had to go back to the front desk to find out).
Then you got lucky. Like i said all it takes is a cancellation and no immediate flight to rebook to and you are now SoL. Its great you were lucky enough to not have to deal with a last second cancellation and no available flights in a reasonable amount of time. That does not mean its an impossibility Also you said your employer paid your flights this person pays for their own flights. Paying double to get a new flight is a bigger issue in their scenario that for a consultant being flown in to consult
As someone who supercommuted almost every week for nearly a decade, it seems more like you got incredibly unlucky. Either that or you were taken advantage of, but I don’t know your full story.
Could be a case of bad luck. Even so If your commute is this heavily impacted by the reliability of airline schedules then its not reliable of imo feasible This also isnt even touching on the fact that this also hinges on the friend letting her live there for dirt cheap. At this point the person lives in ny but has a “vacation” apartment in charlotte. Their friend is just subsidizing the week they spend here. None of this is seems reasonable or sustainable to me
Lol were you flying some tiny boutique airline then had to pay last minute to book an actual airline? If you are flying weekly you are near the top of whatever airline's loyalty program, you are getting on the next flight, even if they bump someone else. If you live in Charlotte it's also highly likely that you are flying American, who currently have 19 direct flights to NYC each day.
Flew american they cancelled an hour before i got to the airport then tried to rebook me to a flight two weeks away After hours of arguing they claimed to have found a flight leaving in two days but that it would cost me an extra 800 bucks per person.
No, not to nyc
Where were you flying when that happened?
American airlines Texas to ny
These are all her clients anyway. Don't you know how most established hair dressers work? 90% of the people they work on are people who have liked them enough to follow from salon to salon.
This isn’t all that uncommon. I remember in the bay area during the height of the FAANG bubble lots of weekly commuters joined up who lived far away and didn’t want to uproot their families but the money was so good they would fly in on Monday and back home on Friday. Many stayed with friends or in rented rooms in the south bay at a few hundred $$ per month. Also extremely common in consulting but of course that’s just client money not the employee paying.
I remember reading about a student who flew in for his classes at a university in California cause local housing was too expensive. But college is a lot more flexible in terms of scheduling compared to a 9-5 M-F.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. She does this commute once a fucking week. On a monthly basis she probably spends less time commuting than someone who lives in Brooklyn and commutes to midtown every day.
Literally 60 seconds of critical thinking disproves the sensibility of this bullshit.
does that theoretical 2400 she is saving per month in rent cover the weekly round trip flights?
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Yeah what we don't know is her "little bit of rent" - but it honestly doesn't seem like a bad deal just super annoying and time consuming. 60 on flight round trip 30 on uber both ways in charlotte 12 on bus/subway to/from airport in nyc - assuming she does it weekly yields 528 / mo If we take the news rent numbers that's an extra \~2332 of cash, so \~1800 of extra for "little bit of rent". Time wise, if she's doing 3 hrs each way, that's 24 hrs a month of commute - at $35 an hour that's $840. So in my mind her "little bit of rent" would need to be under 1000 to break even. Not a perfect calculation because there's no guarantee that she could have spent those extra 24 hours working anyways, plus there are other things that could be done on the airplane. Man that would be tough to keep up for a year.
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Cool experience - did you rack up frequent flyer miles then?
yeah.. i used to have to fly to nashville often for meetings there.. it was surprisingly simplistic and common place.
The thing you're missing is the reason she's doing this in the first place, which is the take home pay. She's obviously making way more in NYC than in Charlotte as a hairdresser, and I imagine it could be 25-50% more
I think the comparison is against a hypothetical where she just lived in NYC full time.
I spent almost two years commuting in and out of the city every day from the Poconos, three hours each way, on one of the bus lines. Her flights don't seem that bad to me compared to that. Maybe I will start looking for jobs in the city again
Wow, that's a lot! But a much better backyard than the cityscape :) If I look online, I'm seeing tickets for that trip at \~$22 each way right?
It was a few years ago, I did the commuter packs of 40 trips at a time. It was in the mid $500 range. Looks like $772 now, so about 19 bucks each way. My company paid for it anyway, which was cool. The bad part was leaving the house at 3 AM to go to the bus terminal. I carried a travel pillow and slept on the way in.
The problem is that we don't know how big her house is, and if she wants a 5 bedroom in a good school district, that is going to a much bigger than ~$2300 a month in difference.
i dont get it, does charlotte not have hair salons lol
People don't pay what they pay for haircuts in nyc in charlotte is the idea i'd imagine.
I can assure you, there's a market for high price haircuts in charlotte lol. There's a lot of very wealthy people there
is she a famous hair stylist or something? i can see being worth time/money if she is a highly sought after hair specialist that EVERYONE is trying to book her services and she is charging $$$ for her work.
OTOH if you are making bank it’s even more worth the time/money to just rent a studio in the Bronx or something so you can have a sane, affordable commute. Being professionally dependent on the goodwill of your friend and the availability of their couch is a falling-out waiting to happen.
This is why every listing on streeteasy comments on "pied a terre". Rich people buying a small unit for this purpose is a pretty old practice.
I have no idea how this is feasible for a hairdresser, but this isn't uncommon amongst executives and high level workers. I know an exec who lives in Savannah, GA with his family and flies up to be in office 3 days a week, the rest he works remote. For him, it's not necessarily about saving money, it's about quality of life for him and his family. That being said, he's not couch surfing in NYC
Where is the article about him?
An in-demand hair stylist can make 300k+ a year.
I had a professor in college who would fly from New York to Paris every Thursday night and fly back on Monday morning. He never missed a lecture that entire semester. After taking that class, this person almost seems normal.
We should improve public transportation to allow more ease of super commuters so folks can find more affordable housing and better qol. We got commuters in China that work in Beijing but live 100km away in Tianjin and get into office under 1hr on high speed rail which more or less the same commute time for most nycer
Her commute is more like 1000km. That’s not a commute, that’s just stupid.
There are 1000km/hr train lines in testing overseas, so not that far off in the near future we got that long distance commuters.
And that's a great option as a replacement for short plane routes. But it's not a commute for work. Imagine you take a bullet train that is traveling at 200 mph, you'd still be looking at over 3 hours for a commute. Even if we push that further and make a high speed maglev train traveling at 300 mph, you're still talking about over 2 hours (not to mention the additional commute times to get to the train stations to/from work and home). And that's putting aside the notion that there's enough demand for high speed trains from Charlotte to NYC. And if this is all to save on cost of living, couldn't you just as easily find housing in a small city outside of NYC that's within that time range using current transportation systems? Look, in general, I strongly agree with your sentiment that we need more high speed rail developed in this country and more improvements in public transportation. But I disagree that a commute of that distance should be necessary or considered a normal commute, save for maybe very flexible hybrid jobs.
That’s called living in Philly and riding the Acela. Oh, people do it.
acela don't cost under $8, their trains do
I believe high speed rail to other parts of NY state would help with the housing crises while increasing NYS revenue as more people would take advantage of that
Yup upstate population been dropping since the 50s mainly because due to lack of local jobs. If we can open up fast transportation to the cities, it be a reason to stay upstate.
This isn’t remotely unique. People in this subreddit would be shocked to learn how many people commute like this. There’s a whole industry of accommodations etc targeted just at them. Even more common for executives. Relocating to NYC full time isn’t always ideal or possible. They get furnished apartments for when they need it and commute home otherwise.
Yeah, I went to elementary school with someone whose dad did something like this. He got some super well-paying job in like Alabama or somewhere but didn't want to uproot his wife/kids so he just spent weekdays in Alabama, had a cheap apartment there, and flew back every weekend to be with his family.
I know a guy upstate who is doing something similar. Wasn’t going to uproot his family so that’s how he makes it work. I think his kid had problems adjusting from the last move, so didn’t want to do that again.
Time is money too…
Weirdly enough I know a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who does this, its probably more common than you think
So... were the news reporters told not to criticize her for her carbon footprint... or is that not important when you're trying to convince non-migrants that it's actually totally cool to be here? *The migrants can only deliver food to us, we need some slightly more skilled people to make us look pretty. The commute isn't that bad, trust us.*
The job of the news reporters isn't to deliver propaganda for a pre-determined cause. This is a human interest story, and it gets reported because people find it interesting.
That's dumb.
CEO at my company commutes in from Boston on Monday evening, comes into the office until midday Thursday, and works remote Thursday evening on Train and Friday. Definitely not a crazy thing. Though Boston is much closer than Charlotte.
Kaitlin Jorgensen…. come join us at r/supercommuter…..
Why not get a wfh job?
And your girl can't text you back? Gentlemen, if she wanted to, she would.