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Posted on Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Dave!Forget running the country, making travel reservations is hard work. It's really, really hard work (well, if you don't care how much you'll be spending, it's actually kind of easy work... but to get any type of bargain is so hard). For instance, I've got another trip to Germany coming up. I am entirely flexible as to when I leave and when I return. You would think that such flexibility would mean that I could easily get a decent fare considering that Northwest has about a billion specials running right now.

You would be wrong, of course.

Apparently those wholly incredible wunder-rates only apply if you sacrifice a goat to the internet reservation gods, because I spent close to three hours trying to find them to no avail. I picked the proper dates. I selected the correct day of the week. I even crossed my fingers. Nothing seems to work. I ultimately ended up with a crappy $600 non-upgradeable (the horror!) fare.

Why is it so insanely difficult? I mean, why can't I go to the Northwest airlines site, tell it where I want to go, then have two calendars come up (one for departure, one for return) that will tell me when the sale rates are in effect? It's all computerized, so how difficult could it be?

Web Air Fare Sale

Something like this would do two things... 1) Customers could easily spot which dates the sale is in effect, which dates are available, and how much the ticket will end up costing them. 2) Airlines could no longer post goofy, unachievable fares, and make their customers waste untold hours trying to find that "magic combination" that gets them the advertised promotional rate.

There are sites that attempt to do something like this, such as Orbitz's excellent "Calendar Matrix," but it's only for domestic flights and really doesn't show where you get the sale rates. Oh well. Whichever airline comes up with something to make reservations for sale fares easier to figure out will be the one that ends up getting my business. Right now they all suck.


Categories: Travel 2005Click To It: Permalink
   

Comments

  1. Ben says:

    Oh, Germany. *clears throat*

    Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

  2. Dave2 says:

    Ja, ein wenig (I am desperately out of practice, however).

  3. Mia says:

    I totally agree…the last time I made airline reservations online, I ended up with an ulcer and was in desperate need of a Calgon Moment.

    But then…I’m an airhead.

    No pun intended. 🙂

  4. Ben says:

    Wenn Sie angelagen dort, Sie

  5. karla says:

    British Air has the capacity of which you write. I love booking tickets on their website. It’s got almost the exact matrix you illustrated. I could write a book on booking travel (ha!). It can be so frustrating and time consuming.

    Ich kan auch etwas Deutsch sprechen. Aber mein ‘grammar” ist scheisse.

  6. Ben says:

    Ja, Grammer saugt und blasen! Ich hasse Grammer!

  7. annette says:

    I have come to believe that dealing with an airline, any airline, could easily be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

  8. Dave2 says:

    Grammar is the difficult part of any foreign language study, and the easiest part to forget. I know hundreds of Japanese words, but lost the ability to put them together coherently.

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