26 October 2008

Air Travel: Helpful Web Sites

[Wish (2005) by Terry Allen. DFW Airport Terminal D]

My current favorite strategy for air travel is to max my miles as much as possible: use reward miles to book business/first class seats for multiple cities over the span of as many weeks as possible. My daughter taught me this. She used the technique to get across the country (New York, Dallas, San Francisco, New York) over 6 weeks of travel. I'm typically not gone that long, but I'm currently planning a 10-day trip to cover those cities in different order.

When it's time to buy tickets—which I do more often than redeem reward miles—I check out these web sites:

www.airfarewatchdog.com - started by a travel journalist, this site prides itself on the human touch. Analysts preview the fares listed to insure that an adequate number of seats is available on a flight. If the number is limited, that is noted; if the number is severely limited, the fare is removed from the list.

www.seatguru.com - reviewed on this blog before, seatguru continues to be a favorite. Recently I received a call from an airline asking me if I would like an adjustment in my itinerary (to a non-stop flight ). Before I said yes, I asked about the quality of the seat available to me. I said, "if I were online, I'd check this out on seatguru before saying yes. Do you know what I'm talking about?" The rep was quick to assure that the seat had no deficits. (Later, I did go to seatguru to confirm—the airline rep was correct.)

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

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