Just booked four tickets for our family to fly to New York City in August. May I
whine again about
frequent flyer programs? As much as I love the money they save me, they sure can cause travel inconveniences. I had enough points with
American Airlines to acquire two free tickets. For the departure I had many choices of times and layover cities on
aa.com, so I selected a convenient non-stop flight. For the journey home, there was only one option on the date I chose to travel so I booked it. Fortunately it was a fairly convenient itinerary.
The attempt to purchase the other two family members' tickets is when it became difficult. I couldn't find the return flight available for purchase anywhere: not on
AmericanAirlines.com, not on
Kayak or
Expedia. The not-so-fun result? We're not flying home together. I had to find a different flight home for my husband and daughter that departed approximately the same time from the same airport (LaGuardia). Managed it, luckily. But it sure would be nice to be on the same plane with my whole family.
Just booked four tickets for our family to fly to New York City in August. May I whine again about frequent flyer programs? As much as I love the money they save me, they sure can cause travel inconveniences. I had enough points with American Airlines to acquire two free tickets. For the departure I had many choices of times and layover cities on aa.com, so I selected a convenient non-stop flight. For the journey home, there was only one option on the date I chose to travel so I booked it. Fortunately it was a fairly convenient itinerary.
The attempt to purchase the other two family members' tickets is when it became difficult. I couldn't find the return flight available for purchase anywhere: not on AmericanAirlines.com, not on Kayak or Expedia. The not-so-fun result? We're not flying home together. I had to find a different flight home for my husband and daughter that departed approximately the same time from the same airport (LaGuardia). Managed it, luckily. But it sure would be nice to be on the same plane with my whole family.
I whine about frequent flyer programs all the time now. I'm convinced that it's getting harder and harder to book seats using miles. We use Air Canada's Aeroplan program and have a large amount of miles accumulated but I can't seem to ever book a flight with them anymore. The seats are released close to a year ahead and that seems to be when you have to book or there are no seats available without using about triple the standard number of miles. I haven't been able to use points for any of our flights this year but the one that I found the most shocking was when I tried to book flights for three of us to fly from Toronto to Chicago for a weekend this summer. Tried to book them 8 months ahead and there was no availability despite the fact that there are numerous daily flights.
ReplyDeleteMy other pet peeve is that the ticket is free but you still have to pay taxes and surcharges. We are going to Paris this month and I could have used points but the taxes and surcharges were going to cost almost as much as what I ended up paying in total for 4 tickets in an Air France seat sale. Very frustrating!
I feel better now that I've ranted too!! :)
I so totally agree with you Lisa. It really is frustrating, and like you, I DO try to book way in advance, but it still doesn't seem to help.
DeleteI wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down.
ReplyDelete