is this controversial? the existence of cheap cross-country flights makes it much easier for people to move to the best location for their profession and fly back home to see everyone for easter and christmas (or whatever your big two holidays are).

People moved across oceans and continents for careers back when those moves took months. Being able to go back and see family is a perk that's moved its way down the income latter with the advent of cheap air travel but I don't think it's making or breaking anyone's decision to relocate or at least not in numbers large enough to matter.

People will move far away for their careers regardless but if the cheap long distance transportation exists then people will use it. The people who are working in one city and taking a flight back home every weekend are statistically nonexistent. The people who moved across the country and take a plane back a couple times a year to celebrate as major holiday or something are far more numerous but those people would have still moved without the cheap airfare.

You make such a confident-sounding blanket generalization across all human behavior that goes counter to everything I have ever experienced that I don't even know how to reply to this comment.

Do you honestly not believe that people take ease of access to their loved ones when deciding where to work? I've had countless conversations with people talking about how they chose jobs to be closer to family. Transportation lets you convert the spatial metric of "closer" to a measure of time and cost instead. If flights double in price, that means seeing family half as often, which can easily make the difference between choosing job A over job B.

We have millenia of proof to the contrary, to your anecdotal evidence.

People move away primarily for economic benefits. No single mass migration in history of humanity has ever happened "because people wanted to be close to their family".

If you want anecdotes: I know hundreds of people that have moved away from their families and only a few that moved back after being elsewhere. (Literally about half of my graduation year at university have moved away) Most people I know, that moved, see their family back "home" only once or twice per year (summer vacation + winter holidays).

I hope I'm not being pedantic when I point out that the existence of cheap flights isn't the same thing as taking them. I will accept that the existence of cheap flights causes more air travel. I will not accept without evidence that the act of traveling via air leads people to having more dispersed families.

I don't think anyone is implying that you as an individual flying causes your family to spread out. although if you spend most of the year traveling, your relatives might start to wonder what the point of living near your primary residence is. I can see how you might interpret the wording from the original post as saying that, but it doesn't really make sense that way.

the point is that, when it's affordable and normal to fly great distances on a yearly/monthly basis, it causes people to spread out a lot more. then you end up with a chicken-egg scenario where people "need" cheap flights to see their spread out families, but the cheap flights also enable them to spread out further while still seeing each other.

I think it's not that simple. Flying to see your family is always more costly than being close to your family, even when flights are "cheap". What causes people to want to move? What causes people to be ok paying the cost?

choosing where to live is always a tradeoff between many competing factors: proximity to family, intrinsic appeal of a particular area, job opportunities for you and your partner, the list goes on.

odds are, you didn't happen to be born in the optimal location for your desired career. if you can get paid $20k more on the other side of the country and a flight home costs $200, you might find it pretty tempting to move. if the flight cost $2000 or you had to drive for three days to get home, it would be a lot less appealing for people who value seeing their family.

I don't understand how it's so hard to see that cheap flights make a big difference at the margin.

You are implying that there are a lot of people that are on those margins. There's simply no evidence of that being the case.

In fact - the drastic rise of living costs in economic centers indicates that people will take that move, even if that trip back is several hundred dollars and takes many hours.

And yet Europeans roared across the Atlantic in the millions when it took >1 month to sail. Europeans colonized Australia and New Zealand, even further away (~250 days), and only about half the total number of people on board the First Fleet were convicts, the rest went along because it was their job or their choice.

This doesn't refute the concept that now people may choose to live somewhere in part due to its transportation options.

I mean.... Sure.

I hate NYC and yet I recognise that it's the best location for fast travel to Europe... I travel back home about 2 times per year, though.

But implying that travel accessibility is the primary reason is absurd. If I had a good job offer from a company in LA - I would still take it. Even though my travel time to my mother would double(11 to 22 hours)

None of those were casual journeys the way a flight home for Christmas is. For colonists, it was generally the one long-distance trip they would make in their entire lives. In the glory days of the great trans-Atlantic liners, the only people who used them regularly were the very rich.

Casual journeys are still an expensive thing to do. Do you think a median family in US can afford a short trip to Miami, planned even a month in advance?

Could be: I had a parent just move as they transitioned to a retirement, fixed-income budget and needed to live somewhere with a lower cost of living. A big factor in the choosing where to settle was ease of travel back to where other family is located. They ultimately chose somewhere very close to a large airport that had frequent low-cost (sub $100) round trip tickets back back & forth.

My wife and I are planning where we'll settle down based on where there are direct flights to see our parents, so, yes, people do that.