Flying is cheaper than rent

facts👨‍🦱 Bill Zhou could afford to fly three times a week to school because he had accumulated many frequent-flier miles and credit card points over the past few years. He took advantage of the cheap fares and flew a couple of "mileage runs" (when you book the cheapest airfare for the furthest distance) to accumulate more miles and qualify for elite status.

Once he had the highest elite status with Alaska Airlines, he was able to earn 2.5 miles for everyone he flew. By the time school started in August, he had 850,000 miles with Alaska Airlines and could use those miles to reduce significantly his commute cost.

Since he knew what his class schedule looked like, he did a lot of planning and booked all his tickets in advance.

Besides August, all his travel dates fell within the off-peak travel season, so his tickets were much cheaper.

→He usually booked their mileage tickets for Alaska Airlines, which started at 5,000 miles one way and paid $5.60 out of his pocket to cover tax. This is calculated to be $1552.10 and 407,500 miles.

For Southwest flights, he booked most of the tickets during its Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Valentine's Day sales, when flights were as cheap as $30. This is calculated to be $758.24 and 156,945 points.

He spent an additional $71.30 and 5,500 miles on United flights, $15.60 and 6,500 miles on Avianca flights, and $15.90 on Spirit flights. In total, he took 238 flights and spent $2,413.14 on airfare.