I live in Washington and negotiating with my employer about doing a weekend MBA program in Texas. Most, if not all, tuition is covered, I'm staying with family there. However, it's not nothing money-wise. I'm my own with flights.
What I see as a pro, though, is that I'm highly productive on planes and airport lounges. At home, I'm distracted by spouse, pets, Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, etc. I've always been able to focus much more while traveling. I'm confident I can do most of the work for the program in the air, plus I get to hang out with extended family once a week.
For a year and a half I was doing LHR<->SFO every 6 weeks or so. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it much, but it soon became a weird sport to optimize everything. I got it down to ~16 hours door to door, by e.g. ensuring I never needed to check anything in and trying out several options on either end of the flight. I maximised my upgrades by carefully picking flights, and so rapidly got up the tiers of the reward program (I was flying United, because while their standard was low compared to e.g. BA or Virgin, their reward program was far more generous, so if flying often it was a better experience back then). I found great headphones, sleeping masks, pillows. At that point it was close to enjoyable.
But that was with transatlantic flights. Having experienced domestic US flights, I can't imagine doing that regularly. Difference even within the same carriers at least used to be awful. To the point where I'd insist on direct flights over stretching my legs on the east coast because the domestic flights were so awful.
I used to commute (weekly) SoCal/NoCal for a while and still fly quite often. Between airline status and perks like PreCheck and CLEAR and lounge access (all of which one of my CCs gives me for "free") flying is a lot less hassle than it used to be; I can usually show up at the airport only 5 mins before either bag cutoff, or boarding start nowadays, with the biggest hassle usually getting to/from the airport(s).
The LAX-SFO flight averages to around an hour and a half one way. It sounds like he really liked commuting to and from the airport more than flying.
He would have been better off with a PPL and a Piper that takes off from the nearest small airport. It would have cost a little more but the bulk of it would have amortized better over the course of a four year degree (frequent flyer miles and elite status vs life time of PPL and resale value of the plane)
Well you're still at the mercy of weather and airspace restrictions in your Piper. Flying IFR helps, but there's going to be days you'll need to scrap your flight because of winds or days you'll have to fly in pattern for a while waiting for clearance to land, potentially making you late for class.
Reminds me of hearing one of my classmates in college complain about how their boyfriend (at the same college, but a junior or senior) was having to fly back to Hong Kong every weekend to help run the family business. I can only hope that they were able to spend those hours sleeping or studying.
Oh yea those TSA lines and cramped boarding gates and the endless cramped narrowbody planes that take forever to board and deboard. Doing the same route over and over and over again.
Must be joyful!
I live in Washington and negotiating with my employer about doing a weekend MBA program in Texas. Most, if not all, tuition is covered, I'm staying with family there. However, it's not nothing money-wise. I'm my own with flights.
What I see as a pro, though, is that I'm highly productive on planes and airport lounges. At home, I'm distracted by spouse, pets, Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, etc. I've always been able to focus much more while traveling. I'm confident I can do most of the work for the program in the air, plus I get to hang out with extended family once a week.