Sunday, February 04, 2007
Ah airline tickets.
Simon is one lucky puppy - he landed Air Canada's North American Flight pass. What does that mean? Chimon can fly as much as he wants, anywhere in north america, for two months....for $400.
I on the other hand have had not so much luck with Air Canada. Laura and her family go to Florida in the winter to a place called Sanibel Island. Laura is going down for 5 days and, although she initially invited me down, flight here pretty expensive I'd have to take a few days off work, eating into my very limited vacation time. So, I said no.
Then, last week Air Canada had a seat sale! $99 fare each way, makign the All in cost a very reasonable $300. Laura turned up her charm, and before long I was convinced. Now I just needed to get approval from work - from the client, and then from my company which can take a couple of days.
Thursday rolled around and I was getting anxious about the seat sale ending on me...I decided to book even without approval, and was even at the part of the process where I'm typing in my credit card info - but my 'session' on air canada timed out...THREE TIMES. So I gave up and decided to wait until Friday / approval.
Well, friday rolled around and lo and behold all the necessary emails were in place. Hop on to Aircanada.com to book my tickets...whaaat!?!?! $300 each way!?!?!?! Add taxes, and now we were looking at $450 MORE than the day before!? Rather than $300, $750!? $750 is a LOT of money for a quick little pop down to florida on friday fly back on tuesday.
In a total panic(how the heck do I break this to laura!?) I scour the web - westjet has halfprice sales to everywhere in floriday EXCEPT Fort Myers. Expedia, travelocity, itravel2000....nothing. The best I could find where connecting flights. After 2 hours of frantic investigation with help from coworkers, I finally decided to cough up $250 plus an extra vacation day and fly down the Friday morning on AC, then for Tuesday night I found a $125 US airways connecting flight going through charlotte(6 hour flight vs 3 hours direct). Total cost - $460, about $180 more than the original. Needless to say I was pretty pissed off at myself.
But this is the kicker, this is what put this over the top. This is really rubbing it in. This morning...ALL air canada flights to fort myers, $99. ALL of them! Even the ones that LAST week weren't $99. So it's like there was this ONE DAY window where they tripled their prices, and that just happened to be the day I bought my ticket.
What a grift - and to think, for the same price, Chimon has cashed in 10+ flights around North America. Methink this whole airline thing is such a game - a game I'm not very good at.
I on the other hand have had not so much luck with Air Canada. Laura and her family go to Florida in the winter to a place called Sanibel Island. Laura is going down for 5 days and, although she initially invited me down, flight here pretty expensive I'd have to take a few days off work, eating into my very limited vacation time. So, I said no.
Then, last week Air Canada had a seat sale! $99 fare each way, makign the All in cost a very reasonable $300. Laura turned up her charm, and before long I was convinced. Now I just needed to get approval from work - from the client, and then from my company which can take a couple of days.
Thursday rolled around and I was getting anxious about the seat sale ending on me...I decided to book even without approval, and was even at the part of the process where I'm typing in my credit card info - but my 'session' on air canada timed out...THREE TIMES. So I gave up and decided to wait until Friday / approval.
Well, friday rolled around and lo and behold all the necessary emails were in place. Hop on to Aircanada.com to book my tickets...whaaat!?!?! $300 each way!?!?!?! Add taxes, and now we were looking at $450 MORE than the day before!? Rather than $300, $750!? $750 is a LOT of money for a quick little pop down to florida on friday fly back on tuesday.
In a total panic(how the heck do I break this to laura!?) I scour the web - westjet has halfprice sales to everywhere in floriday EXCEPT Fort Myers. Expedia, travelocity, itravel2000....nothing. The best I could find where connecting flights. After 2 hours of frantic investigation with help from coworkers, I finally decided to cough up $250 plus an extra vacation day and fly down the Friday morning on AC, then for Tuesday night I found a $125 US airways connecting flight going through charlotte(6 hour flight vs 3 hours direct). Total cost - $460, about $180 more than the original. Needless to say I was pretty pissed off at myself.
But this is the kicker, this is what put this over the top. This is really rubbing it in. This morning...ALL air canada flights to fort myers, $99. ALL of them! Even the ones that LAST week weren't $99. So it's like there was this ONE DAY window where they tripled their prices, and that just happened to be the day I bought my ticket.
What a grift - and to think, for the same price, Chimon has cashed in 10+ flights around North America. Methink this whole airline thing is such a game - a game I'm not very good at.
# posted by Greg @ 5:11 AM 
