Whinging Wednesday - your travel complaints go here

[mrsukyankee]

I hate, hate, hate trying to find a beach home. I'm trying all sorts of sites and they keep saying, "available" and then I try to get the place and the owners say, "we're sorry, we have a place-holder for this year's renters". Then mark the freaking place as NOT AVAILABLE during those dates. Damn it. I'm also trying to find something with 3 bedrooms with at least double beds and one bedroom with two twins and 3 bathrooms.  Unless I want to spend insane money, it's so difficult. I know, what a problem to have...

So, what would you like to bitch about?

[mich1]

Airline travel sites.

I've booked a cruise for this December and was trying to find business class flights to Lisbon. I hate it when I find a flight and one of 2 things happens. The price of the advertised flight goes up $800 (x2 for DH and myself) when I try to book it, or I find out that one of the legs is in economy class.

[wkatie]

Flying to Maui (or any other HI island) from Seattle - since when are 90% of nonstop returning flights overnight? We are thinking of HI for spring break next year, but I don't think a 6 hour flight leaving at 8:45pm local time will be pleasant for anyone.

[wildrice]

I am annoyed at holiday travel prices. The ones I've looked at actually aren't HORRIBLE, but they are at least double what it would cost to travel to the cities I'm looking at any other weekend. H and I both are really limited on vacation time this year, so it makes more sense to travel to see family actually ON the holidays, but since we don't have a lot of flexibility on dates the flights are the most expensive on the days we want to travel.

I think my parents may actually pay for our flights for Christmas, if we decide to come, but I highly doubt we'll be going to see my extended family for Thanksgiving. I just can't justify spending $700 when we can only be there a couple of days. It's a real bummer, I've never skipped Thanksgiving before, but I've never had to fly in the past either.

[mcsangel2]

Jul 25, 2018 15:54:03 GMT -5 wkatie said:

Flying to Maui (or any other HI island) from Seattle - since when are 90% of nonstop returning flights overnight? We are thinking of HI for spring break next year, but I don't think a 6 hour flight leaving at 8:45pm local time will be pleasant for anyone.

It's because Seattle is the hub for Alaska Air and Hawaii is apparently a hugely popular destination for Alaskans during the colder months. So many flights are overnight to accommodate the people (not just Alaskans though) that are catching connecting flights.

However, I live in Phoenix and have the same issue w/Hawaii flights. We're a hub for Southwest.

[sunnysally]

I'm trying to book flights on KLM and even though I'm putting in the correct date, the return flight keeps changing to two days earlier.

[GilliC]

A new one for me: The car rental company putting the wrong license plate on the car, so you get pulled over by the police who think it might be stolen! So you have to deal with a police stop after 23 hours of traveling and take the time to drive an hour back to the airport the next day to exchange the car!

[iammalcolmx]

Delta wants a gazillion points to fly Business from Atlanta to Frankfurt the Friday before Thanksgiving. The closest I can get for a reasonable amount of points is Zurich. Maybe something will open up as the trip gets closer.

[mbcdefg]

Trying to organize any kind of trip with my family is like herding cats. 

We're driving about 6 hours away this weekend to visit my grandmother, and my mom and brother STILL haven't booked a hotel room. Not my problem because MH and I very early on told them we're driving our own car and we rented a VRBO ... but, yikes, people, make some plans!!!

[mrsd2006]

Jul 26, 2018 10:41:56 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Delta wants a gazillion points to fly Business from Atlanta to Frankfurt the Friday before Thanksgiving. The closest I can get for a reasonable amount of points is Zurich. Maybe something will open up as the trip gets closer.    

I feel like Delta's been really stingy with the skymiles sales this year. 

[majesty318]

Jul 26, 2018 10:41:56 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Delta wants a gazillion points to fly Business from Atlanta to Frankfurt the Friday before Thanksgiving. The closest I can get for a reasonable amount of points is Zurich. Maybe something will open up as the trip gets closer.

I am flying to Berlin in November (not on points or anything) but it was way more to go direct to Berlin. I instead booked to Zurich and booked a separate connection from there. Swiss has a fare class called flexible (or something like that) where you can actually change to an earlier flight same day for free. So I booked a late connection, just in case, but most likely will be able to advance it. If you don't mind connecting, check to see if there are a lot of Zurich to Frankfurt flights. There were tons to Berlin.

[udscoobychick]

I was looking at booking a trip to Greece using AA points...problem is, all the flights are on BA, who charges ridiculous fees. It was going to be something like 115k points PLUS $1k each to fly. Eww. I might as well pay for it straight-up at that point.

[iammalcolmx]

Jul 26, 2018 12:45:34 GMT -5 udscoobychick said:

I was looking at booking a trip to Greece using AA points...problem is, all the flights are on BA, who charges ridiculous fees. It was going to be something like 115k points PLUS $1k each to fly. Eww. I might as well pay for it straight-up at that point.

It's the London airport fees, I think?

[udscoobychick]

Jul 26, 2018 12:50:22 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Jul 26, 2018 12:45:34 GMT -5 udscoobychick said:

I was looking at booking a trip to Greece using AA points...problem is, all the flights are on BA, who charges ridiculous fees. It was going to be something like 115k points PLUS $1k each to fly. Eww. I might as well pay for it straight-up at that point.

It's the London airport fees, I think?

I think it's an airline thing...after some poking around, I found an AA-coded flight that still went through LHR, just like the BA ones, and the fees were only like $100 each.

[iammalcolmx]

Jul 26, 2018 14:26:48 GMT -5 udscoobychick said:

Jul 26, 2018 12:50:22 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

It's the London airport fees, I think?

I think it's an airline thing...after some poking around, I found an AA-coded flight that still went through LHR, just like the BA ones, and the fees were only like $100 each.

DAMN!!

[iammalcolmx]

Jul 26, 2018 12:04:54 GMT -5 majesty318 said:

Jul 26, 2018 10:41:56 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Delta wants a gazillion points to fly Business from Atlanta to Frankfurt the Friday before Thanksgiving. The closest I can get for a reasonable amount of points is Zurich. Maybe something will open up as the trip gets closer.

I am flying to Berlin in November (not on points or anything) but it was way more to go direct to Berlin. I instead booked to Zurich and booked a separate connection from there. Swiss has a fare class called flexible (or something like that) where you can actually change to an earlier flight same day for free. So I booked a late connection, just in case, but most likely will be able to advance it. If you don't mind connecting, check to see if there are a lot of Zurich to Frankfurt flights. There were tons to Berlin.

I was able to get good deals( points wise) into Brussels. I am going to do that I believe.

[iammalcolmx]

Jul 25, 2018 15:12:51 GMT -5 mich1 said:

Airline travel sites.

I've booked a cruise for this December and was trying to find business class flights to Lisbon. I hate it when I find a flight and one of 2 things happens. The price of the advertised flight goes up $800 (x2 for DH and myself) when I try to book it, or I find out that one of the legs is in economy class.

Keep checking Google flights. I got a flight from Faro to Toronto for 500 one way in business on TAP. 

[scout8]

Jul 26, 2018 14:26:48 GMT -5 udscoobychick said:

Jul 26, 2018 12:50:22 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

It's the London airport fees, I think?

I think it's an airline thing...after some poking around, I found an AA-coded flight that still went through LHR, just like the BA ones, and the fees were only like $100 each.

Nice! We ran into this issue trying to get to South Africa this year. All the flights were on BA and the fees were ridiculous. We finally gave up and picked a different destination. Now I'm opening United credit cards to churn points and hopefully make it to SA in a year or two.