Ick
I'm at home today, since I'm not feeling well. I decided to make use of my time here and look at travel information.
One of the things I was counting on to cut down on the cost of my travel to Argentina was the fact that I had a large pool of frequent flyer miles. I was planning to use them for at least one of our tickets. I logged in online to look at my account today, and all but 500 of my miles are gone. Expired. Dammit. So there goes that idea. There's no way that I can accumulate enough miles in the next 12 or so months to equal what I had. To get a free ticket from here to Buenos Aires, I'd need at least 40,000 miles. I had more than that. Now I have a paltry 500. I can buy miles, but only 25,000 per calendar year, and 25,000 miles costs $625. So I'm stuck.
I have an aunt and uncle who used to work in the airline industry and could get reduced or free airfare. They're both retired, so I don't know if they can still take advantage of that, especially with the state of the industry. I guess it's worth a shot to ask. It would be better than paying close to $5000 for 3 tickets.
I suppose it's better that I realised my miles are gone now, instead of in a few months when I actually went to purchase the tickets. At least I have some time to explore my alternatives. Any ideas?
One of the things I was counting on to cut down on the cost of my travel to Argentina was the fact that I had a large pool of frequent flyer miles. I was planning to use them for at least one of our tickets. I logged in online to look at my account today, and all but 500 of my miles are gone. Expired. Dammit. So there goes that idea. There's no way that I can accumulate enough miles in the next 12 or so months to equal what I had. To get a free ticket from here to Buenos Aires, I'd need at least 40,000 miles. I had more than that. Now I have a paltry 500. I can buy miles, but only 25,000 per calendar year, and 25,000 miles costs $625. So I'm stuck.
I have an aunt and uncle who used to work in the airline industry and could get reduced or free airfare. They're both retired, so I don't know if they can still take advantage of that, especially with the state of the industry. I guess it's worth a shot to ask. It would be better than paying close to $5000 for 3 tickets.
I suppose it's better that I realised my miles are gone now, instead of in a few months when I actually went to purchase the tickets. At least I have some time to explore my alternatives. Any ideas?
posted by carrie at 1/11/2005 06:44:00 a.m.
4 Comments:
Okay, here's the problem I'm running into. I won't actually be leaving until the first part of December, and most online ticket places (including the airlines) aren't booking that far in advance.
So I've picked the closest available dates. I also discovered that it's cheaper to buy round trip than one way.
The dates that I'm using are leaving here on 29 Nov and returning on 2 Dec.
Through American Airlines website, the quoted price for 2 adults and 1 child is 3418.95 USD.
To fly from Little Rock to Dallas on 29 Nov on American is 327.60 USD
On Delta's website, the same trip is 4276.95 USD.
To fly from Little Rock to Atlanta on 29 Nov on Delta is 897.60 USD.
I checked Expedia for the same dates round trip and the lowest fare I got was through American, 3433.95 USD.
I checked Travelocity for the same dates and the lowest fare was again on American, 3432.00 USD.
I checked Cheap Tickets, same dates, lowest fare on American, 3436.00 USD.
I also checked Priceline and their lowest fare was also on American, 3724.80 USD.
I noticed that on the 4 non-airline sites, they're all booking the same flights. Same flight numbers and such. The first three are pretty close in price. I wonder why Priceline is so much more expensive in comparison?
Anyhow, you get the idea. I'm looking right now at about $3500 for tickets. I suppose checking with a travel agent couldn't hurt.
This would have been much easier if I had just stuck with my original plan to go there instead of Julian coming here. Then I would have only had 1 ticket to buy instead of 3.
I went back to American Airlines site and tried departing Little Rock on 29 Nov and returning on 5 Dec. My total cost would be 3350.95 USD. It's only 68.00 cheaper than with a non-Saturday stay. I guess I'll wait until it's a little closer and hope that there are some specials or something. I also tried returning on 6 Dec and it's the exact same price.
Who knows?
I've checked flights from Miami to BA on the same dates and the lowest fare I found is a total of 2738.94, but it's non-refundable.
From Dallas/Ft. Worth on the same dates, the lowest fare is 3280.95, so it's almost better to just book it all at once, from here to DFW and back, since it's only 70.00 more for the total round-trip, and I sincerely doubt that I'll be able to fly all 3 of us to Dallas for less than 70.00, even with any local specials. Currently the cost for a rt ticket from LIT to DFW on the same dates for the 3 of us is running 515.20.
This is really frustrating, how do they determine fares? It doesn't seem to make any sense?
But I hate to wait. Patience is not one of my virtues. :)
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