I’m a Supercommuter. Here’s What It’s Really Like.

Sometimes I sleep in a different New York City hotel room every night.

On a recent Monday, it was a Midtown Manhattan Hampton Inn. The next night, a budget hotel downtown. Then I moved to a Hyatt in Queens, near John F. Kennedy International Airport, where I waited to check in behind a group of pilots and flight attendants.

The reason for this madness: My job is in New York, but my apartment is in Columbus, Ohio. When hotel prices are high, I property-surf to find a lower rate.

For more than a year, to the bafflement of family, friends and colleagues, I have attempted to live and work as a supercommuter. What began as a postpandemic experiment of flying to and from New York each week has turned into what I am hesitant to call a lifestyle.

Like many, I moved out of the city early in the pandemic, relocating near family in the Midwest. When it came time to return in 2022, I was underwhelmed at the housing options in my price range. I toured one-room studios facing brick walls and climbed crumbling staircases to reach dank apartments with ancient fixtures. I also had grown accustomed to midweek evening walks with my sister in Ohio, and a short drive to see my parents. I didn’t want to fully give that up.

Using back-of-the-envelope math, I thought I could keep my expenses—rent in Ohio, plus travel costs—at or below the price of a nice New York studio, or roughly $3,200 a month. The Wall Street Journal requires office attendance at least three days a week and, since I commute by choice, I pay all my travel expenses.

Luxury suites and room service

The challenge felt oddly thrilling. If anybody could find a way to subvert high New York real-estate costs, while remaining close to family, I thought it might be me. For years, I’ve been an on-call travel guru to friends and co-workers, coaching people on how to navigate flight cancellations and play the credit-card bonus games. I memorise aircraft configurations and spend hours reading mileage blogs and industry sites like Airliners.net.

Before mileage runs became useless, I obsessed over reaching top-tier airline status by spending as little as possible. (Family members still roll their eyes at the six hours I spent in Anchorage one December afternoon to requalify for Delta’s Diamond tier.) When a flight is oversold, I am quick to volunteer my seat in exchange for a voucher. (My best-ever haul: $2,000 after giving up my seat on multiple oversold flights one Saturday in San Francisco.)

Nerding out about this stuff has allowed me to travel farther and in more rarefied air than I could otherwise afford.

Entering my supercommuter era, I had visions of flying to New York on a weekday morning (8,500 points one way on American Airlines), spending the day meeting sources and filing stories, and retiring to one of my favourite points hotels—the Beekman. Mornings would begin with a free breakfast thanks to my Hyatt status, before a short subway ride to the office. After two nights, I’d return to Columbus and my roomy apartment, half the price of a Manhattan studio.

Shocking no one, that fantasy soon came crashing down.

Burning points on fancy hotel rooms was the first problem. The life of a journalist is hard to predict. I repeatedly found myself on deadline and having to rebook flights or stay an extra night, costing me money or miles.

Once I was back in the city, it also got harder to say no. Stay an extra night to attend a friend’s birthday party or meet a CEO in town just for the day? Sign me up. I didn’t want my living situation to strain relationships or interfere with my job, which I love.

To conserve hotel points, I swapped the Beekman’s elegant rooms in lower Manhattan for a Hyatt attached to a casino in Jamaica, Queens. My rooms overlooked a sea of empty parking spaces, but required half as many points as Manhattan alternatives.

Flight delays and blown budgets

By summer, with my miles dwindling and New York hotel rates rising, I reluctantly began to rely on the kindness of those around me. Hearing I might need a place, one friend mailed me the keys to her family’s unoccupied apartment in New Jersey. Another let me stay in her smartly designed Brooklyn one-bedroom for weeks as she traveled. A cherished deskmate, known for her tell-it-like-it-is demeanour, repeatedly offered a bedroom in her Chelsea loft, handing over the keys with a sometimes expletive-tinged reminder to: “Get a f—ing apartment.”

I watered plants, walked friends’ dogs and fed their cats while they were away. Still, working in a city without a permanent home took a toll. I came to dread the go-to question asked at parties and work events in New York: “So where do you live?”

After house sitting for friends, I fell in love with some of their pets, including my friend Vanessa’s Border Collie mix, Ivy. But when in hotels without a refrigerator or stove, uninspiring meals abounded; a late-night dinner of yogurt and fruit.
CHIP CUTTER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

If I admitted, “it’s kind of complicated,” I got sucked into explaining my life as a supercommuter. Sometimes, I’d just tell people the location of that evening’s hotel. (Chelsea!)

Costs mounted in the fall, New York’s prime tourist and business-travel season. Friends teased me for embracing a life of chaos. They weren’t wrong. Without a refrigerator or stove, late-night dinners often consisted of yogurt and fruit purchased from a 24-hour CVS. Needing to pack light, I stored shoes under my desk and left spare outfits on an office coat rack.

To get to the office on time, I set my alarm in Columbus for 4:15 a.m. and hustled to the airport for 6 a.m. flights. When everything went according to plan, I made it door-to-door in three hours. If delays occurred, I scrambled to rebook on other flights.

My obsessive tracking of New York hotel prices taught me that dynamic pricing isn’t reserved for airlines. Hotel costs can fluctuate half a dozen times on the check-in date, so instead of booking in advance, I’d wait to pull the trigger until 10 p.m. some days after the rates fell.

In the end, the math didn’t work. I blew my budget by 15% and drained my miles balance. But I flew so much and stayed in so many hotels that I kept my elite status with Hyatt and American.

I still enjoy having one foot in the Midwest and one on the East Coast, though I’m not sure how long I can keep it up. I’m writing this from Columbus, where I overlook a beautiful park outside my picture window. My lease is up, but hotel rates in Manhattan this winter have plunged now that the holidays are over. Maybe that New York apartment search can be put off a little longer.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

I’m a Supercommuter. Here’s What It’s Really Like.

The money, miles and stamina it takes to work in New York and live in Columbus, Ohio

Luxury suites and room service

Flight delays and blown budgets

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.