At the height of the dot com boom, a friend joined a dot com. He lived in Los Angeles. The dot com was in Silicon Valley. Rather than uproot his family and try to find housing in the hottest housing market in the nation, he decided to commute by plane.
Every week he flew 6 to 8 times between LAX and San Jose. He began to recognize fellow travelers, people who made the same daily 600 mile round-trip commute. A group of them lived in the beach communities just south of LAX -- Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach. Many of them managed to make it home most nights and back most mornings.
He claimed that the beach people lived so close to LAX, they could drive to LAX, fly to San Jose and get to their companies quicker than many of their co-workers who resided in and about Silicon Valley. The locals had to navigate Silicon Valley's congested highways, often more nightmarish than the friendly skies.
It was expensive, but not ridiculously so. After a while he became a student of fares, buying in advance when the fares were low and drawing down his bulging frequent flier account when fares were high. Sometimes he'd have to spend the night up there, but he knew the cheap but good motels.
It seemed to be a grueling commute. But he was chasing a dream. Without the lure of dot com riches, I don't think he or any of his fellow travelers would have become air commuters.
Throughout all this, I marveled at his ability to live and work in such different places. By day he partook of the madness of Silicon Valley, by night he relaxed in a relatively placid Los Angeles neighborhood.
It may be true that the airline industry, as a whole, has lost money in the 100 years since the Wright brothers' first flight. The real profits have been earned by people like my friend, able to pursue far away dreams at an historically low cost to themselves and their loved ones.
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