Mar 17th, 2022.
I was packing for my trip to London, when I received a notification from UC Berkeley. "
I am delighted to inform you that I am recommending to the Dean of the Graduate Division to admit you to the MEng program in Transportation Engineering at UC Berkeley for the 2022-23 academic year." A week prior to that, I was rejected by MIT (which was expected cuz I applied for yolo purposes), and now I got admitted to the best Civil Engineering program in US. I smiled, finished packing, drove to LAX, and boarded my LX flight to LCY via ZRH.
I fell in love with transportation since I was young. After I finished undergrad, I became a full-time transportation engineer and took advantage of those low fares in 2020 and 2021, and did some mileage runs on AS, which got me 850K miles over the past two years of flying. In 2021 I was flying almost every weekend, all for leisure purposes. Sometimes I would fly LAX-MIA-LAX same day return just for fun, because I always got UG on the 6am LAX-MIA AA 772/77W even with a $49 one-way fare. Before I quit my job, I joked to coworkers, "since it's just an one-year program, and technically only 8 months long, maybe I should consider commuting by air just to save money and avoid paying bay area rent!" My coworkers knew I was "unique" (a better way of saying psycho), but such an idea still caught them off-guard. They all thought I was joking.
I love my job and our team at work, we all support each other and are rather friends than corporate coworkers, so I decided I would come back once I graduate. I checked Berkeley student housing near campus, it costs around $1600 minimum per month for a single (excluding utilities), and the contract is 12 months, although my program only runs from August to May (8 months after deducting winter break). LAX-SFO is one of the busiest corridors in U.S., with 100+ daily nonstop flights across multiple airlines departing from LA5 (LAX, LGB, SNA, ONT, BUR) and SF3 (SFO, OAK, SJC). I have a lot of AS miles, so it would make sense booking award tickets on AS to save money, although everyone kept telling me not to do it, and even if I attempt to do it, WN to OAK would be the only practical solution. (See
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...r-commute.html)
So I started my research after I accepted offer from Berkeley. I found out if I book early enough, AS usually has saver level awards (5k miles one-way) for M-F everyday, with the exception of Monday LA to SF and Friday SF to LA. I decided not to go with their flight pass because the flight pass costs $64 one-way and I can simply book $49 LAX-SJC and same-day change (SDC) to LAX-SFO using elite perks for MVP100K. In early April, costco in socal area had a promotion for AS gift cards, $400 for $500 value, so I bought 8 of those to save money, because those would be deposited into your wallet and can be used even when paying for the $5.60 tax (AS metal award flights only).
I created a google sheet to keep track of all my bookings, including columns such as month, date, day, carrier, ticket cost (miles), ticket cost (tax/cash), booking PNR, checkbox for confirmed booking, checkbox for SDC, BART payment, and parking payment. Based on preliminary estimation, I could save at least $12k in total if I commute to school by plane. I guess the money saving part is just me convincing myself, in fact the real incentive is the cool story and amazing trip. I even applied Guinness world record for the longest distance of school commute within an academic year. Unfortunately after 3 months of waiting, they denied my application due to "this is more like a personal achievement and doesn't encourage competition". Either way, I'm doing this epic commute regardless.
In late April, I booked most of tickets for fall semester (Aug-Dec 2022) using AS miles. For Monday LA-SF and Friday SF-LA, AS wants 10k miles for direct flight. But if I threw in some littler trick, I could book LAX-GEG(overnight)-SEA-SFO for 5k miles, or SJC-PDX-STS-LAX, or SFO-LAS-LAX for 5k miles. Then I would wait for schedule changes, as long as one of the segments has schedule change greater than an hour, AS allows me to rebook to +-1 day for free, with any reasonable routing that shows up in their search engine. That's how I managed to book all my AS tickets at the lowest saver award of 5k miles one-way.
By the time I finished booking those tickets, I was uncertain about my class schedule since it's not finalized and published yet, but upon checking the class schedule for 2021 academic year, I could get a sense of whether those courses will be offered M/W/F or Tu/Th. It's a gamble, because if I would have classes every weekday, this commute would be nearly impossible. Every Saturday night, AS would hit me with 30-40 schedule changes, and it was such a PITA calling AS to rebook them (although most of them worked in my favor). That's when I realized why everyone suggested me flying WN in the AS forum. SFO to Berkeley is a long way, and AS schedule for August was a disASter. Tuesdays the last SFO-LAX flight departs at 5pm, and Wednesdays the last SFO-LAX flight departs at 210pm, unless I do the 735pm SJC-LAX. That's when I decided not to put all the eggs in one basket. So I requested status match to A list on WN (of course they didn't give me A list preferred) since they operate 89 daily nonstop flights between LA5 and SF3 (I counted all of them!), and I booked 6 revenue tickets on WN to complete the challenge. Later on I even applied for WN credit card just to get the signup bonus to make my commute even more affordable.
Similar to AS, WN allows their elite members to SDC for free. That's the flexibility I value most. Because sometimes I might have to stay on campus a bit later due to group projects or office hours, so I need a carrier which allows me to SDC flights without fare difference, so WN and AS would be a perfect fit. Now airlines have waived cancellation fees, so as a precautionary measure, I booked tickets for all weekdays throughout the semester, even though I don't have any classes on some of those days. If I don't have to show up on campus on days which I don't have classes, I can always cancel tickets for free and get wallet funds/miles redeposited into my account. If there are project meetings/office hours/seminars/social events that I have to show up on campus, I always have tickets ready to get me going, so I would never have to pay for those last-minute fares because they can be very expensive, which undermines the purpose of "saving money".
When the class schedule was gradually released, I kept refreshing the class schedule website to make sure my preferred sections/timeslots are available for enrollment, because if I can't enroll that specific section, I would have to come to campus 4-5 days a week instead of 2-3 days a week. To be honest, it was exhausting because I had to monitor those class availability manually. I don't have experflyer equivalent of course enrollment tool which tells me when the availability opens up.
Here is the preliminary course schedule:
Fall 2022 (Aug 8th-Dec 16th, including orientation and finals):
270A: M/Tu/W/Th/W 1100am-1230pm (Aug 10th-Aug 19th only), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
270B: M/Tu/W/Th/W 145pm-315pm (Aug 10th-Aug 19th only), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
270C: F 800am-930am (Sept 23rd-Nov 18th only), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
255: M/W/F 1000am-1100am (Aug 24th-Dec 2nd), 3 units [COMPLETED]
295: W 1100am-1200pm (Aug 24th-Nov 30th), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
251: M/W/F 1200pm-100pm (Aug 24th-Dec 9th), 3 units [COMPLETED]
252: M/W/F 100pm-200pm (Aug 24th-Dec 9th), 3 units [COMPLETED]
296A: Tu Sept 13th only, W 500pm-600pm (Sept 21st-Nov 30th), 2 units [COMPLETED]
Spring 2023 (Jan 4th-May 17th, including spring recess, finals, and commencement):
270L: M/Tu/W/Th/W 945am-1145am (Jan 4th-Jan 13th only, ONLINE), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
270M: M/Tu/W/Th/W 730pm-930pm (Jan 4th-Jan 13th only, ONLINE), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
260: Tu/Th 1100am-1230pm (Jan 17th-Apr 27th), 3 units [COMPLETED]
270K: Tu 530pm-600pm (Jan 31st, Feb 28th, Apr 4th, Apr 18th only, ONLINE), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
295: M 1100am-1200pm (Jan 23th-Apr 24th), 1 unit [COMPLETED]
259: M/W/F 1200pm-100pm (Jan 18th-Apr 28th), 3 units [COMPLETED]
296B: M 400pm-500pm (Jan 23th-May 1st), 3 units [COMPLETED]
So I booked all the tickets on weekdays between Aug 8th, 2022 and May 18th, 2023, except campus holidays. To avoid spamming the forum, I will only post monthly trip reports for my commute in this thread, so there will be 10 updates in total (monthly between Aug 2022 and May 2023). In each monthly update, I will provide flight info (of course with a lot of pictures since I enjoy flying), commute time tracking, and cost for each flight, as well as monthly summary of gas/parking/BART/flight cost. Stay tuned!
August 2022:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34575652-post3.html,
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34575655-post4.html
September 2022:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34665479-post35.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34665482-post36.html
October 2022:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34767061-post55.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34767062-post56.html
November 2022:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34994714-post72.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34994716-post73.html
December 2022:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35171353-post82.html
Fall Semester Overview:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35171373-post83.html
January 2023:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35172473-post84.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35172475-post85.html
February 2023:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35175348-post86.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35175353-post87.html
March 2023:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35222888-post104.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35222894-post105.html
April 2023:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35341343-post121.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35341348-post122.html
May 2023:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35357922-post128.html
Commencement:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35361849-post132.html
Spring Semester Overview:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35361854-post133.html
Total Commute Overview:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35361856-post134.html