Airline Search Hell

Spring is in the air and Ron's thoughts roam to Denver, Iowa and every once in a while Pittsburgh. Yes, it is his any adventure to the US, a place I have not cared to visit since 2003. Its all good that I stay away. 

Before Ron can plan any flights, he has to send out 43 e-mails to family and friends to verify which dates are good, which are not and then coordinate everyone's good and bad lists. There really should be a computerized calculation program that monitors people's behaviors that are fed into a giant data bank. When you want to visit, you plug in your ID and then the data bank spits out a report. This is an optimal time to visit 39.25 out of 43 of your friends and relatives. Of the 39.25, 13.05 don't give a hoot whether you visit or not.

Ron has been poring over airline consolidator sites looking for good deals. BUD>DEN, CID>PIT, and then PIT>BUD with moving dates here and there, but the prices still came out close to $2,000. That is more than what we paid to fly from BUD>ADL and that was a HEL OFA WAY FAR. This is nuts spending this amount of money for 3 weeks, but he insists. My view is if they want to see me badly enough, they will come here every other year. So far, no one has come. All the more reason for me not to spend the money to go there. 

Half of my day has been spent trying to find the best possible fares without having to mortgage my organs to pay for it. It still is beyond my perception why travel authorities praise Kayak search engine. I think bait and switch technique extraordinaire fits it well. Over the years, I have tried it a dozen times with hopes my luck has changed. Today, I found a great multi-city deal for Ron. When I clicked on "Book Now" it shows a message stating it has to redirect me to the US Airways website. Those seconds of transfer raised the price by $1,000. Orbitz was no better. All of the great deals "could not be confirmed by the airlines". So why are they still on the site if they cannot be grabbed. 

I tried different credit cards, different browsers, different sites; it was all an exercise in frustration. Then I gave CheapTickets.com a shot. The price was good if you can call $1,290 good, but still better than the $2,000 offerings elsewhere. 

I booked it not giving a rat's a*$ whether Ron liked the times or not. My day was shot, my patience wore out 2 years ago. Appearing before me was the same form as Orbitz, which did not bode well and I felt Murphy's Law creeping up on me again.

Success!! I was so excited I almost wanted to book a second ticket from excitement, but was able to keep myself at bay. Such are the joys of travel.

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