Having spent this entire day working with bizarre airfares and structure, I ended up buying business class tickets from San Diego to Amsterdam (where we then travel to Kenya) for this summer. It was cheaper to buy business than to buy economy and then upgrade. The cost of the economy ticket plus the upgrade cost would have been $100 less and I would have used up miles.

The business class tickets were amazingly low for my dates--surrounding dates were from $1500 to $2500 more for the same flights. It all makes no sense at all.

I wish we could return to the simple ways of yesteryear. I'm afraid of permanent brain cell loss.

You have a lot more patience than I do. I spend my time in ten minute chunks over the course of maybe 3 or 4 days and that's it. I get what I get and I don't second guess my decisions on dates, price, class or connections and it still drives me crazy.

Jeff, once I do it, no more second guessing. It's a done deal but I do try to do the best I can at the time I'm doing it.

Jane, which airlines did you use?

quote:

Originally posted by Podie:
Jane, which airlines did you use?

This was United.

There are always so many probs with the airlines these days.

I have a friend that is a computer programmer for a major US carrier. He works on the algorithm(formula) that they use for determining prices. It is so complex that they have multiple programmers working on it at once and they don't always communicate well with each other. That makes the program full of holes, difficult to understand and somewhat idiotic. That can be good or bad for the flying public.

I found on United it was cheaper to fly First Class (fully refundable) than it was to fly Economy (fully refundable)(MDT-ABQ) I still selected Economy non-refundable for about 1/5 the price