This is how much Casey Neistat traveled in 2016

This is how much Casey Neistat traveled in 2016

I’m usually pretty late to the game when it comes to mainstream media and trends, and it was only last March that I first discovered Casey Neistat on YouTube. His style of storytelling combined with some pretty epic video editing skills have been entertaining millions of people for over 15 years now, so I did feel a bit behind the curve when I first discovered him. And I’m glad that I did – the content that Casey produces is so good, and his creativity so contagious that I can’t help but to feel overwhelmingly inspired to crank up the quality of my own videos better after watching one of his. He’s that inspiring.

Casey Neistat vlogs
Casey doing what he does best: telling great stories.

Unfortunately, those of you who’ve been following Casey for the past year or so are probably just as crushed as I am about his recent decision to stop vlogging so that he can focus on “what’s next”. What exactly that is is anyone’s guess, but his daily vlogs were so fun and creative that I looked forward to each and every one of them with great anticipation. I’m going to miss those 10-minute nuggets of quality entertainment every day.

One of the things I like most about Casey is his passion for travel. That love of travel combined with his great storytelling skills have made for some very entertaining videos over the past two years, and the thing I find most interesting about his style of filming is that he’s actually a better trip-reporter than 99% of other trip-reporters I’ve seen on YouTube. And he didn’t even try to make good trip reports – he simply filmed the process of traveling, edited it in a way that only Casey Neistat can, and ended up with some really great content. For example, check out this recent video he made of his first class experience on an Emirates A380 from SYD to DXB – I can only dream of making content this good:

 

The way that he just sticks the camera in his face, says what he needs to say with no shame, and tells the complete story of being on that flight is really inspiring. Sometimes I tend to overthink all of my own videos (in both filming and editing), and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Casey, it’s the value of just doing whatever it takes to get the shot – without overthinking it.

Tracking Casey Neistat’s travels over a one year period

Casey was so good at documenting his travel in his vlogs that it was pretty easy to identify every single route, airline, and aircraft that he flew. This was something that I appreciated right from the beginning, and the stats freak in me wasted no time in creating a spreadsheet to document his travels. At first I was only doing it for fun, just to be able to tally up the miles he’s flown and the airlines he experienced. This was done completely out of my own jealousy for the amount of traveling he was doing, and I was having lots of fun plotting all this data out into fun charts and graphs in order to get a better look at his travel patterns.

My ultimate goal was to track each year of Casey’s travels and post that data once-yearly here on SANspotter.com. The fact that I had only discovered him during March of this year meant that I had to do some backtracking which required watching all of his videos from January 1st to make sure that I had all of his flights documented for the year. Then, come January 1st 2017, I was going to compile all of that data and post it here on the blog.

But then he quit vlogging. That means he is no longer filming his trips in such great detail and I found myself unable to finish this little project of mine. So not only was I crushed when he stopped vlogging, I felt a bit defeated when I realized that I would be unable to document a full year of his travels! What to do, what to do…

Long story short, I decided to backtrack a little further to November 2015 and document all of his travels since that time. That meant I would have data from November 2015 to November 2016 to post here, which was still true to my goal of tracking one year of Casey Neistat’s travels. Ready to see some data? Read on!

Casey Niestat’s flight log

Here is the spreadsheet that I used to track Casey’s flights over a one-year period (November 2015 to November 2016), based on what he showed in his videos on YouTube. It’s kind of long, so get ready to do some scrolling!

 

Nov 10 SFO-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint
Nov 9 JFK-SFO jetBlue A321 Mint
Nov 3 SLC-JFK jetBlue A320 Economy
Nov 3 LGB-SLC jetBlue A320 Economy
Nov 1 JFK-LAX American A321T First Class
         
Oct 27 DFW-EWR American MD-83 First Class
Oct 26 LGA-DFW Delta E170 First Class
Oct 17 WST-TEB Wheels Up King Air 350i Assume these were TEB/WST airports – not totally sure but safe to assume
Oct 15 TEB-WST Wheels Up King Air 350i Private/chartered plane to Connecticut with Wheels Up
Oct 10 TEB-PHL    Lear Jet Free ride to PHL on a private jet just for the heck of it
Oct 6 LAX-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint
Oct 3 IAH-LAX American Eagle E175 First Class
Oct 1 JFK-IAH jetBlue A320 Economy – window seat/aisle seat/all over the place dealing w/Francine
         
Sep 29 BNA-LGA Delta CR7 First Class – could have been CR7 or CR9 (couldn’t tell from footage)
Sep 28 LGA-BNA Delta CR9 First Class – could have been CR7 or CR9 (couldn’t tell from footage)
Sep 25 ACK-JFK jetBlue E190 Economy
Sep 23 JFK-ACK jetBlue E190 Economy
Sep 15 DXB-JFK Emirates A380 First Class (upgrade)
Sep 15 SYD-DXB Emirates A380 First Class (upgrade)
Sep 13 DXB-SYD Emirates A380 Business Class
Sep 11 JFK-DXB Emirates A380 Business Class
Sep 7 LHR-JFK Virgin Atlantic A340-600 Business Class
Sep 5 JFK-LHR Virgin Atlantic A340-600 Business Class
Sep 2 CTG-JFK Avianca A319 Business Class? Not enough footage to tell, but most likely
Sep 1 PTY-CTG Copa 737-800? Business Class
         
Aug 3 CNF-PTY Copa 737-800? Business Class
Aug 30 GRU-CNF Azul 737-800 Economy
Aug 29 IAH-GRU United 767-300 Business Class
??? FRA?-IAH United? ??? Took the week off – no uploads – no way to track flights
??? ???-FRA? Lufthansa? A320? Took the week off – no uploads – no way to track flights
??? ???     Flew in/out of TRS (Italy), SPU (Croatia), with one brief clip showing a Volotea A319
Aug 21 FRA-VCE Lufthansa A320? Business Class
Aug 20 IAH-FRA Lufthansa A380 Business Class – was supposed to be on a UA 763 but flight was cancelled
Aug 18 LGA-IAH United 737-800? First Class / could have been a 739 – too hard to tell
Aug 17 SFO-EWR United 757-200 BusinessFirst – after driving Owen cross country to San Francisco
         
Jul 24 YVR-JFK Cathay Pacific 777-300 First Class (upgrade)
Jul 22 JFK-YVR Cathay Pacific 777-300 Business Class
Jul 1 PUJ-JFK jetBlue A320 Economy
         
Jun 28 JFK-PUJ jetBlue A320 Economy
Jun 27 LAX-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint? None of this was filmed but safe to assume
Jun 22 JFK-LAX jetBlue A321 Mint
Jun 17 SFO-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint
Jun 15 JFK-SFO jetBlue A321 Mint
Jun 7 BFS-EWR United 757-200 BusinessFirst
Jun 4 EWR-BFS United 757-200 BusinessFirst
         
May 28 AMS-JFK KLM 747-400 Business Class / upper deck / missed BA flights, was rebooked on this one
May 25 LHR-AMS British Airways A320 Club Europe
May 24 JFK-LHR American 777-300 First Class
May 19 SFO-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint (not the single suite)
May 17 EWR-SFO United 777-200 BusinessFirst (rear facing seat)
May 9 SFO-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint (not the single suite)
May 8 CUN-SFO United 737-900 First Class
May 6 EWR-CUN United 737-900 First Class
         
Apr 30 LAX-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint
Apr 27 JFK-LAX jetBlue A320 no Mint (aircraft downgrade)
Apr 17 NCE-JFK Delta 767-300 Business Class
April 14 CDG-NCE Air France A320? Business Class
April 13 JFK-CDG Air France A380 Business Class
Apr 3 MSY-JFK Delta A320? First Class
Apr 1 LAX-AUS Southwest 737-700?  
         
Mar 31 SFO-LAX American 737-800? Economy
Mar 28 JFK-SFO jetBlue A321 Mint
Mar 23 LHR-JFK British Airways A380? Club World
Mar 22 CPT-LHR British Airways 747-400 Club World
Mar 15 LHR-CPT British Airways 747-400 First Class
Mar 14 JFK-LHR British Airways 747-400 Club World
Mar 13 AUS-EWR United ERJ-175 First Class
Mar 10 DFW-AUS American 737-800 First Class
Mar 10 EWR-DFW American 757-200? First Class
Mar 1 LAX-JFK American A321T Business Class
         
Feb 25 JFK-LAX American A321T First Class
Feb 20 MIA?-JFK American? 757-200? First Class
Feb 20 PTY-MIA? American? 737-800? First Class
Feb 18 MIA-PTY American 737-800 First Class
Feb 18 JFK-MIA American 757-200 First Class
Feb 4 SFO-JFK American A321T Business Class
Feb 2 JFK-SFO American A321T Business Class
         
Jan 22 SFO-JFK American A321T Business Class
Jan 20 JFK-SFO American A321T Business Class
Jan 17 FLL?-JFK Delta ? ?
Jan 16 JFK-MIA American 777-200? Business Class
         
Dec 30 LAX-JFK jetBlue A321 Mint
Dec 16 JFK-LAX jetBlue A321 Mint
Dec 5 FLL-JFK jetBlue A320 Economy
Dec 4 HAV-MIA Havana Air 737-800 Economy / Chartered aircraft / Eastern Air livery
Dec 1 MIA-HAV Havana Air 737-800 Economy / Chartered aircraft / Eastern Air livery
Dec 1 JFK-MIA American A320? First Class

 

Please note that there are some missing pieces in this spreadsheet – anything labeled with a question mark (?) means that I’m not 100% confident about that piece of data, and it was just a best guess based on what I could see in the video. Also, there was a 1-week period in late August when he and Candice (his wife) traveled to Europe and essentially took the week off. They did a lot of flying during that period, and not much of it was filmed, so there are some unfortunate gaps there.

So now that we have a mostly-compete flight log documenting one year of Casey’s travels, let’s break down some of data and pull out the interesting bits:

  • Miles flown: 198,361
  • Total number of flights: 85
  • Personal trips: 19
  • Business trips: 57
  • Airlines flown: 17
  • First class: 27 times
  • Business class: 42 times
  • Economy class: 14 times
  • Most flown airline (by number of flights): jetBlue – 23 flights total
  • Most flown airline (by miles flown): jetBlue – 46,440 miles
  • Most frequent route: LAX-JFK / SFO-JFK (tie – 6 times each)
  • Longest segment: DXB-SYD
  • Shortest segment: TEB-PHL

And now, let’s have a look at some charts and graphs showing some additional flight data:

casey neistat's top airports and airlines
Casey’s top airports and airlines over the past 12 months. JFK and jetBlue are tops, which isn’t surprising considering that he’s based in New York.
casey neistat's top aircraft and routes
Casey’s top aircraft and routes over the past 12 months. The A321 and transcon routes (JFK-LAX/SFO) are tops due all those business trips to the west coast on jetBlue.
casey neistat's flying distances
Casey’s overall travel distances per route / airline over the last 12 months.

He’s done a fair bit of interesting travel over the past year, hasn’t he? Casey’s not a true road warrior by any means (at least in flyertalk terms), but the amount that he travels is something that I can only dream of doing myself. And when it comes right down to it, the 198,361 miles he flew over the past year seems to be the perfect balance of fun vs. work. That amount would definitely be enough for me to quench my own wanderlust, and I’m pretty sure that anything less wouldn’t be as fun – but anything more might be too much.

It was really interesting and fun to track Casey Neistat for a year and compile all of his interesting travel data, and I’m totally bummed that I won’t be able to do it anymore. Thanks for letting us come along with you Casey. It was fun while it lasted!

One Response

  1. Ian Warburton

    October 11, 2019

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