Airline Tickets

My wife is usually the one who buys the airline tickets around here. Not too surprising since she does most of the traveling, but earlier this year she had to go someplace and it was left to me to arrange air transport for younger son's sojourn to Norway. Anne had started negotiations with a travel agent, but after I talked to this agent and reiterated that we needed a flight to Bergen, not Oslo, and she sent me a second itinerary that still went to Oslo, I said enough of this and pulled up Expedia on my computer, and that's when it got interesting.

John (aka younger son) wants to stop off in Washington DC to visit some friends. Since Washington is approximately between here and Bergen this seemed like a reasonable request. I mean, it may not be directly  on the great circle route from Portland to Bergen, but it's not like it's in the completely wrong direction, like Hawaii would be, either.

One thing I have learned about airlines in my many years is that one way tickets cost just as much as a round trip ticket, or at least they used to. Things change so much and so fast it's hard to tell whether the knowledge you have is "hard won wisdom" or obsolete as yesterday's news. Anyway, "round trip tickets" is  what I was thinking, so I figure I'll book him a round-trip ticket from PDX to Washington DC, and a second round trip from Washington to Bergen. Prices look reasonable: less than two grand all told. There is a bit of a layover in DC on the way back (like 18 hours), but hey, it works and it's cheap enough, and maybe his friends can entertain him during the eternal layover, so I buy the tickets.

Now we hear that Grandpa and Grandma are coming to visit. They are only going to be here for a few days. John's return flight will be happening at the same time, so his extended layover in DC is going to cut into the time he would get to spend with the grandparents. This isn't good, so I attempt to rectify the situation.

First off I call Expedia to try and get the last leg of his flight changed from DC to PDX. I call, they tell me to leave my number and they will call me back. 30 minutes later the return call comes in, but the battery in my cordless phone is dead so I miss the call, so I call again. More of the same, but I eventually get connected. I spend what seems like an eternity on the phone with the agent. Eventually she figures out how much it will cost to change the ticket. Are you ready for this? $4200. That's more than twice as much as the original ticket. Thank you, but no. John will just have to suffer through the layover in DC.

OK, that didn't work, but how about if I just buy him a one way ticket from Toronto to PDX? Just forget about flying to DC and all that. So I check Expedia and it looks like such a ticket will only cost $350. Shoot, that's almost affordable, and it would get him home 24 hours earlier. I discuss my findings with my wife and she agrees, so I proceed to buy the ticket. Except. I made a boo-boo. I asked for a flight date in November instead of December. When I put the correct date in the price jumps to $500. Grrrr. Do we still want to do this? Well, we don't see the grandparents very often, so yes, we'll bite the bullet and spend the extra $150.

I log on to Expedia, select the flight we want, double check the date and time, enter all my credit card info, check all the check boxes, go back and fix the places I missed, and press the go button. Bzzzzzt! Wrong! Error! Try again later. Bah. Go away, come back the next day, go through the whole rigamarole again and get the same result: no can do. Well, this isn't good.

Older son suggests Google Flights, which I have never heard of, but sure, why not? So I go through the same process with Google, same flights, same prices, an extra little hiccup because the price is in Canadian dollars because the flight originates in Canada and I am paying from America so we have to do this currency conversion thing. Go through all this and, Bzzzt! Wrong! Error! Same result as with Expedia. What's going on here?

This one stupid change to this ticket has consumed two hours of my time over a period of two days. I am now determined to get this ticket if it's the last thing I do. So I call United. I am on hold for a long time. I finally talk to an agent and I get put on hold again. It's a speaker phone so I don't have to hold it to my ear while I am waiting, but they are playing some really obnoxious ads at very high volume. I am on hold for so long the battery starts to run down, so I have to change phones. Twice. I am on hold so long I can look up the owners manual for the phone online, download it, and look up the section that tells you how to turn down the volume on the speaker phone. Amazingly I do not get cut off. Eventually the agent is able to things sorted out and I have purchased a ticket. I was on the phone for an hour.

Well, I think I bought a ticket. I was expecting an email with all the gory little details, but it hasn't shown up. I imagine this is going to require another phone call.

All this could have been avoided if I had just noticed the little checkbox on Expedia's page labeled MULTIPLE DESTINATIONS. Who'd of thunk it? Not me, evidently. Google Flights doesn't seem to support this feature either.

Update: I was able to get the flight information off of the United website using the confirmation number. Not only was I able to see it on the website, I actually got them to email a copy to me. Will wonders never cease?