Should I wait?

[Zach1213]

19 minutes ago, Eggtuary said:

This is what has me nervous. When I contacted Lufthansa, they said that Kayak was my travel agency. Meanwhile, Kayak‘s employees don’t seem to consistently know that they are ever anything more than a search engine. So if anything goes wrong with my flights, does that mean I can’t work with the airline employees at the gate?  Will I instead be stuck on the phone with Kayak and their (thus far, lousy) customer service, trying to book new connections?

 

Unfortunately, I have pretty much zero experience with that scenario so I am not confident enough to answer it, so I'll wait for someone who knows more to come along 🙂

[iancal]

17 hours ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

For everyone.....please remember that those "special" pricing deals are almost always on consolidator/bulk tickets.  And that they are NOT the same as tickets that you would get from the airline directly.  The fare rules are usually more restrictive than published-fare tickets, and often have restrictions on endorsement to another carrier, routing restrictions and even flight number restrictions, to mention a few.  Along with stricter rules on changes and refunding to credits.

 

If price is your overriding consideration, then grab the cheapest ticket.  Just know what you are buying.

The reality is that many people are completely unaware of fare codes and what they mean.   It only matters to them when things go pear shaped.  The can learn the hard way that some tickets cannot be used on other airlines, that rebooking on the next available flight is done on the basis of that fare code.

 

It does not happen very often.  We were twice fortunate by understanding fare codes. 

 

The first time we changed our airline to one that allowed a change for $200 vs one that did not.  As luck would have it this was the first time we have had to return home from Thailand  for a family issue. The cost of a one way ticket would have been 4X what we paid in change fees.   

 

The second time we 'missed out' while changing planes in DC on an overnight hotel stay  our expense (blizzard) and a 24 hr. delay  because our fare code allowed us to take the last two seats on a westbound flight to SFO, then change to another short flight home.  The airline agent is not going to tell you the reason you cannot get on the next flight is that your fare code places you at the back of the line of people waiting to re-routed.  

 

We will buy discounted tickets if the price delta is substantial.  But only if our scheds for the first two or three days of a trip are flexible or if we are returning home with no pressing issues. 

 

Consolidator ticket have saved us a lot of money on O/W Europe fares over the years.   Most of those have been on BA.

Edited October 7, 2021 by iancal

[Eggtuary]

The first leg of my trip has been canceled (from SDF to ORD).  I can now use this as an excuse to cancel all of my plane tickets, and get the vast majority of my money back.

 

So now I'm wondering if I should.  Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding flights for business class that are reasonable in price without flying through Canada or flying airlines that some of the folks on here have warned against.

 

When I first booked months ago, ITA Matrix was great for finding affordable business class flights at times that worked for me.  But when I just tried calling Lufthansa for flights I found with ITA, they told me that business seats were no longer available.

 

My wife is now willing to fly out of CVG, now that she sees our options are quickly disappearing.

 

Our preferences:

• Depart noon-ish or later, both on March 25th (from SDF or CVG), and on April 9th (from BCN)
• Have layovers of roughly two hours or more, particularly when going through Customs
• Fly business class
• Try to keep the price not too much more than $3K per passenger

Thanks!!

Edited November 14, 2021 by Eggtuary

[zdcatc12]

19 hours ago, Eggtuary said:

The first leg of my trip has been canceled (from SDF to ORD).  I can now use this as an excuse to cancel all of my plane tickets, and get the vast majority of my money back.

 

So now I'm wondering if I should.  Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding flights for business class that are reasonable in price without flying through Canada or flying airlines that some of the folks on here have warned against.

 

When I first booked months ago, ITA Matrix was great for finding affordable business class flights at times that worked for me.  But when I just tried calling Lufthansa for flights I found with ITA, they told me that business seats were no longer available.

 

You can try bookwithmatrix dot com. You take the itinerary that you found on ITA and paste it into this website and it will take you to the airlines website with those flights already selected. You should be able to book it that way. I have never had to use it, but when I tried it, it seemed to work. The key is that you paste the whole readout that you get from ITA into the browser.

 

 You could also see if those flights come up on google flights as that will also have a direct link to the airline site with those flights selected.