Booking airfare
June 6, 2008
Boy oh boy, every time I think I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to airfare, I make another mistake.
I spent a couple hours working out an elaborate plan to trade award credits with BD last night. I have SW award credits, he has a free round-trip ticket on United. He needed an open jaw flight, and his free ticket doesn’t allow multi-city travel. Southwest didn’t have the travel dates I wanted open for Standard awards.
We checked: I could find a flight on United, could redeem a one way ticket for half of his travel on SW, and buy a one way ticket on United for $87. I did my usual scope out on Travelocity first, and then went to the United site to actually pin down the cheaper fee-free price. $87 for a multi-city trip, for almost exactly the itinerary he wanted. So what do we do? I let him promise that he’d buy the ticket today, and let it go at that.
He sure didn’t buy it, and overnight, the ticket went up to $110. ARGH! I knew I should have snagged that sucker, or at least reserved it last night! I know prices can go up at any time, look at the dratted gas prices skyrocketing twenty cents in 5 days, for heaven’s sake!
Of course, the irrational response was then to refuse to buy it because it was $23 more. Completely irrational? Yep! But the price isn’t going to be any less if we wait even longer. *sigh* So the trip’s going to be over $100 instead of under $100. There’s something depressing about spending just over the $100 mark.
He took a risk and that didn’t pay off.. alternatively you could be like me, booking a flight and then realizing the prices are MUCH CHEAPER NOW than before.. like $200 cheaper
#$*&@$(@%&@*%&#$*@$@&!&!&^#$!)#$(#%&*#$&
~FB~ I know, I just felt guilty because you can reserve flights for 24 hours with United, and I should have done that. Boo.
Ugh, sorry about your flight, though.
I’ve heard you can try deleting your cookies on your computer. Sometimes places show you the price, then, if you don’t buy, the next time you go there it shows a higher price. Maybe you already bought it but somethign to think of in the future.
~chocoholic~ We’ve already bought this ticket, but that’s definitely good advice.