DISQUS

dahowlett · 2 years ago

Steph: The triumph of persistance over travel agents. You're really emphasiizing something many of us already know - multi-city travel planning is far from optimized. Kayak did a great job IMO albeit I come up with the same limitations from time to time. It's often a case of 'know how' and experience.

Bravo and good luck.

Stephanie · 2 years ago

Thanks, Dennis. I guess some more "general" tips I'd give are:

<ul>
<li>break it up and look at the individual segments</li>
<li>try different combinations of segments to see if it gets cheaper</li>
<li>if you suspect you should fly through a particular city the trip planner isn't suggesting, break your segment in two parts</li>
<li>check the airline sites directly for better deals or other flights</li>
</ul>

Gosh, I didn't think I'd spend all afternoon and half my evening planning this trip and writing a blog post. And I still haven't actually booked the flights.

shel israel · 2 years ago

Thanks for this exhaustive report and thanks to Dennis who used Twitter to point me to it. I have to minor twists that I you might factor in: (1) How many hours did this take? How much per hour do you bill your time? From tjat perspective what did you save? (2) My primary carrier is United/Star Alliance. I have no love for them but I have enough miles to upgrade whenever I want, which is always for trips from California to Europe. If I need to make a change after booking with a third party, United essntially tlls me that because I used a "discount service" I am not going to get the priveliges I get as a 50K year flier. In short, they will treat me only slightly better than a known terrorist in terms of seats and more important--change fees.

dragos · 2 years ago

kayak guys should pay you for this as I guess that's a business case they should have done by themselves. :)

Stephanie · 2 years ago

Shel: I agree with you perfectly re time used and money saved, and I often use that line of reasoning for myself. It's not worth spending 2 hours hunting for the best price for a digital camera if I'm only going to save $10.

In this case, however, I happen to be more in need of saving money than time right now. What I mean is that the time I used for this -- a lot, definitely, and more because I decided to blog about it -- is not time that I would otherwise have been devoting to paid gigs (these days -- there are times in my life when it is different).

And all in all, even though I didn't write this report with that intention, it's a good demonstration of the kind of service I could offer (in terms of experiential marketing) -- so let's say that I clearly didn't work billable hours on this thing, but that it falls into the "marketing" slot of how I use my time.

Stephanie · 2 years ago

After a call with a very nice service rep from BA (after an aborted call with a much more stubborn and dumb colleague of his), I have gathered some extra information.

<ul>
<li>difference of price between codeshare and "original company" on the same flight: there might be 10 classes available in Economy, but only the 5 more expensive are available on codeshare</li>
<li>if flights from different airlines are on the same ticket, then in case of transfer problems they will take care of the customer. If the flights are on different tickets (booked separately), then you're on your own if you miss your connecting flight.</li>
<li>this last point might explain why some combinations seem "missing" from the offers I got through Kayak. Some flight combinations might not be allowed to exist on the same ticket.</li>
</ul>

Nicole Simon · 2 years ago

In complicated cases likes yours (this is not even a normal open jaw flight) one does call the call center of their favourite airline (in your case most likely AA as they serve with BA on the same alliance) and let them wiggle around a bit unless you already know your flight patterns.

And they let you book such a flight because it it the legal turnaround time on the airpoirt - which for T1 to T1 in LHR for example is also an hour - and you have to have something like a call center agent to put you on a later flight.

One reason I prefer to take a special route to SFO over LAX is simply that I do not need to go through AA's hubs in DFW or ORD; but go LHR-LAX directly.

I also notice that you use two allicances in your flight which will make it more expensive; also you cannot select miles this way reasonable. As you are going to SFO more than just once, I would make this part of the calculation of your trips.

One reason for me to go through paying a bit more for my BA flights was that I now have enough miles in the bank for a free flight in their premium economy. Note: not all classes earn miles, and with a call center agent you can ask what the booking class above costs a bit more (sometimes this means the difference between 25 or 100% miles).

Hope everything goes fine with this journey ;)