Friday, July 13, 2007
I hate buying airplane tickets.
As some of you will know, I've been planning on heading to Vancouver this summer/fall for a bike trip with my friend Jason from school. Glorious times and all - the only caveat being buying airplane tickets to get out there. Laura's coming too for a few days, then heading to Calgary, so she's not going a regular "round trip".
Anyways, for a long time we were thinking about this other airplane called Sun Wing which was considerably cheaper than Westjet / Air Canada. Except, it only flies twice a week, and it flies at somewhat odd hours. But cheap -- like half the price kind of cheap.
After doing more reading on Sun Wing, we decided to opt out -- the $400 savings would be fantastic if everything went according to plan, but if there were any hiccups at all(mechanical problems, delays, etc) than it could ruin the whole vacation. So choices were narrowed down to WestJet and Air Canada.
Given that we were pretty flexible on which week we went, I figure we could lock in on some kind of seat sale, but I didn't want to wait til the last minute and end up paying way more than what I would have if I bought earlier... For travel in august, both westjet and air canada had flights at 259->279...but september(our prefered travel month - less kids) flights were 379. We decided to wait it out, hoping september would go down later.
And it did. Down to 249! Sweeet. Even better? Westjet had one flight at 209, but it didn't get in until 11, so I emailed Jason to ask if that'd be okay...but alas, I didn't hear back from him until Tuesday, and by then the flight for *thursday*(our planned departure date) was up to 249. Wednesday and Friday were still 209, but those would mess up Laura's plans to take the train to calgary. So, now faced with 249 WestJet(bad hours) or 249 Air Canada (good hours), we went Air Canada.
Logged back onto westjet today, and the thursday flight is *back* down to 209. WTF. And Air Canada? Yah, some of theirs are down at 209 now too(but the bad hour ones, w hich does me no good - I'd have to pay a $40 change fee, so wouldn't save any money).
Does this story sound familiar to you at all? Kinda like when I got hosered buying tickets to go to Florida back in March? Ya. Airlines hate me.
Anyways, for a long time we were thinking about this other airplane called Sun Wing which was considerably cheaper than Westjet / Air Canada. Except, it only flies twice a week, and it flies at somewhat odd hours. But cheap -- like half the price kind of cheap.
After doing more reading on Sun Wing, we decided to opt out -- the $400 savings would be fantastic if everything went according to plan, but if there were any hiccups at all(mechanical problems, delays, etc) than it could ruin the whole vacation. So choices were narrowed down to WestJet and Air Canada.
Given that we were pretty flexible on which week we went, I figure we could lock in on some kind of seat sale, but I didn't want to wait til the last minute and end up paying way more than what I would have if I bought earlier... For travel in august, both westjet and air canada had flights at 259->279...but september(our prefered travel month - less kids) flights were 379. We decided to wait it out, hoping september would go down later.
And it did. Down to 249! Sweeet. Even better? Westjet had one flight at 209, but it didn't get in until 11, so I emailed Jason to ask if that'd be okay...but alas, I didn't hear back from him until Tuesday, and by then the flight for *thursday*(our planned departure date) was up to 249. Wednesday and Friday were still 209, but those would mess up Laura's plans to take the train to calgary. So, now faced with 249 WestJet(bad hours) or 249 Air Canada (good hours), we went Air Canada.
Logged back onto westjet today, and the thursday flight is *back* down to 209. WTF. And Air Canada? Yah, some of theirs are down at 209 now too(but the bad hour ones, w hich does me no good - I'd have to pay a $40 change fee, so wouldn't save any money).
Does this story sound familiar to you at all? Kinda like when I got hosered buying tickets to go to Florida back in March? Ya. Airlines hate me.
# posted by Greg @ 3:44 AM 
