Why do people commute by airplane?

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Produced by Dave Amos in sunny San Luis Obispo, California.
Edited by Ryan Alva in Los Angeles, California.
Audio by Eric Schneider in cloudy Cleveland, Ohio.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.

[aeae]

My commute is 45 minutes, which is how long it takes me to pull myself out of bed and over to my desk 10 feet away.

[username]

I remember a story about the absurd housing cost in London that showed it would be cheaper for him to live in Spain and commute by plane to London each day.

[Willybean]

I live in an apartment above my business, so I just have to go downstairs.

[GibbieSonOfGib]

My former boss's husband was one of those super commuters. He was a passenger in a 6 person Cessna from UC Davis to San Jose daily. 40 min flying time vs 3 hours in car traffic. Since he was a tech engineer in silicon valley he could afford what I assume were ~$100 daily tickets

[SkuLLetjaH]

I cycle for 5 minutes to work and pay less than 20% of my wage in rent, I feel so blessed seeing this.

[FilipSkobic]

I really miss my 30 minute cycling commute. It's 5 hours of exercise per week that happened by default before, also with amazing scenery of Amsterdam.

[NaterOSx]

It's also normal in Brazil. Lot's of high income people in Rio de Janeiro works in Sao Paulo, especially in the financial sector, so they take 40-minutos commercial flights daily or weekly, it's so normal that there's an expression for it "viver na ponte aerea", that means something like "Living in the air" ("ponte aerea" means something like "aerial bridge", and is the name that we use to define the high-demand route between Rio and Sao Paulo).

[herrgado]

I will never be rich but with a commute of around 8 minutes and working on shifts I can actually enjoy freely large parts of my working days too, that's unbeatable.

[nelandquinten]

There are people that commute to San Francisco from Stockton. Housing is insane in California

[murrayfranklin]

I guess everyone in Southern California is a super commuter then

[Surtfield]

Round of applause for the guy commuting by unicycle 👏

[luis_zuniga]

Here where I live, northern Mexico, that's quite common among doctors, they work in local public hospitals but on the weekends they fly to the US to do surgeries or to their private offices.

[jk-xmfi]

Australia has the reverse commute where people living in a city fly to remote areas to work then fly back for there equivalent to a weekend. I've done that with 8 days work and 6 off.

[danpro]

One of my favorite "commutes" was when I lived in South Korea. Walk across the street to my school, walk across another street for the grocery store (one giant, one family owned), and walk 15 minutes to a huge park... Not to mention surrounded by hundreds of local, affordable, often traditional eateries. Everything was pretty affordable because most people only know urban living, so everyone is used to living close together, in tall apartments, with all kinds of transport options. Don't get me wrong, there were some downsides (crowds crowds crowds) but it's almost always disappointing to go to US cities and rarely get a true urban-living vibe or connectiveness.

[SvenMolhuijsen]

Seems like there are some possibilities for high speed rail corridors

[RaymondStone]

When I was a UC Berkeley student my family lived in Sacramento and I often took Amtrak to return home during school breaks like Thanksgiving and winter. I can't imagine doing that every day I had a class, though I personally know someone who did at the time and she commuted all the way from Elk Grove!

[natalieschults]

Living in Casper Wyoming is crazy, because I always freak out when my State or City gets mentioned.

[lnusnlneproductions]

I really hope that now when we start moving tours more of a home office system, we Can convert many office-buildings to residentual houseing instead

[EpicCompilationTV]

one of the best youtube channels out there

[FerdinandCesarano]

I have lived in New York City my entire life. From 1988 through 1993, my subway commute from Queens (Woodhaven) to the Bronx (South Bronx) was at least 90 minutes.

It was comfortable, because I always got a seat the entire way. During that period I read a ton of books. Really, the commute was the best part of the day.