I just finished 5 years of school over at Waterloo with home in Vancouver so I’ll speak on that experience in the other direction.

I previously looked into the student flight pass as well, and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. For reference, I usually did about 3 or 4 round trips per year. The most expensive flight I paid for was on December 23 which costed around $500 one way in Flex. The cheapest was $150 one way in Standard.

Final exams are generally easier to schedule around as they are released around 2 months in advance. I book my flights asap once these come out and can get a much better price than per flight cost with the flight pass. Only real benefit I can see is the short term planning aspect where they fly home during reading week, thanksgiving, etc on short notice. Midterms are typically scheduled around these breaks which are only released a week or two in advance.

The most expensive times to fly as a student were end of term December for Christmas, and start of term January and September when all students return to school. While I don’t want to endorse skipping class 🤣, flights are significantly cheaper on the first few days classes start (think $400 on a Friday before and $200 on the Monday that class starts)


EDIT: Just checked the price and it’s $2352/6 credits in Standard. Combined with the fact that likely 2 of the flights in a year will be during the peak travel period around Christmas break, it’s almost effectively $2700. I can pull up my flight receipts and check but I think my ticket average has been far below $450 each.