After a lot of hemming and hawing, which I usually do when I try and do something I've never done before, I have successfully (?) booked my tickets to see Grandmother in Hong Kong Sunday/tonight.
There were two levels of trepidation which prevented me from booking them sooner. One of them was timing -- when should I go? But the combination of the test scoring place having a start time for the project I was assigned to plus the winding down of this part-time extension at work finally pushed me to say, "OK, if I am going to see Grandmother before she dies, I have to do it now, and I might as well do it before the test scoring project starts. And if that means leaving the health insurance company early, so be it." Well, I didn't say that whole thing, but you get the point.
The other trepidation which followed was money, which kind of related to timing. I have looked for fares before, but I always figured there was a chance that they could go down, so why book so soon. Well, not knowing when was the best time in my schedule to leave pushed off the booking to the point where I am now leaving less than two weeks from now, and again, if I was going to do this in order to see Grandmother, I have to make a decision.
Luckily, I feel certain that I got a good price. Now, I had to cobble together my itinerary in order to do it. Although I have never searched for flights to Asia, I did search for flights to Europe when I saw my sister get married to my brother-in-law in Switzerland. Upon looking online and not being happy with my entire itinerary laid out through one airline or alliance, I realized something: The fares to an international destination may be much cheaper if the originating city is on the coast. Therefore, if I can find a good enough deal from, say, Newark to Zurich, would I be able to then find a similarly inexpensive flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Newark, and thus save myself oodles of money? That's what I did when seeing my sister's civil wedding -- I found the cheapest fares to Zurich, saw that Newark was workable, and find MSP-NEW flights that got me to Liberty before my international leg and took me out of Liberty after I touched down on my return. (I think I used my miles to get a free airline ticket domestically, in fact. I think I also remember being delayed NEW-MSP, and I think I coaxed a travel agent to get me on another flight on another airline that was leaving that evening.)
That's what I did in this case. I went to find the cheapest tickets to Hong Kong, regardless of where it started from. Over my several searches the cheapest start city came down to two: San Francisco and Los Angeles. This is where I really dithered; for both cities I was looking for the cheapest flights getting there while also joining together time-wise in order for me not to miss any connections.
It gets more complicated. I told you how United took away all my miles. The e-mail I got back from them in reply to my predicament detailed three ways I could get them back. One was to sign up for a United credit card and use it. I'm not going to just sign up for yet another card, and besides, I would nevertheless have to pay a $100 fee. I could also buy them all back, but for $200 -- expensive. The third way is a compromise; I would pay $100, but promise to take a round-trip on United within 90 days after agreeing to pay that non-refundable amount. Then, I could get the miles back.
So for some time I was debating not only how to find the cheapest flights to take me to Hong Kong, but whether or not United should be part of the picture. I was going to pay an extra $100 on top of whatever United ticket (or United airline partner ticket) I was going to purchase. If a non-United ticket was about $200 less than a similar ticket purchased on United, I would have to decide if I should go with United or not. And on top of all that, I wanted to accrue some miles on my Delta account, and the way I could get miles for both accounts was to fly domestically on one airline (or its alliance) and internationally on the other (or its alliance). But which one? Ah, that's why I waited.
Finally, the prices on the leg over the Pacific was getting to be too expensive. So, finally, yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I did it. For the longest time I was going to go internationally from SFO, but I waited too long, so the cheapest price started from LAX and on this airline called China Eastern. Never heard of it before. But they're on Delta's alliance, so I am going to get really fat on that account. That's how it works, right -- any miles you get on a partner can go directly to my Delta account?
That meant that, in all fairness, my trip from here to LAX would be on United. But the cheapest flight there and back was what Kayak called a "Hacked Fare," where I would fly to L.A. on United but fly back on American. American took all my miles a long time ago. Also, I just saw online that I could also get my miles back from them, but it would also cost me $200. Generously from them, however, there is no expiration date on getting back my expired miles (so to speak), whereas with United I have another 18 months after losing my miles after which I would lose them completely and forever.
I called United customer service last (Sunday) night, and the really nice representative who helped me confirmed for me everything I was told on the e-mail. The price difference between the "Hacked Fare" and the all-United ticket was $110, and even though I was going to shell upwards of a grand (or at least I thought), I thought I should save as much money as I could.
This is where things got interesting. I had learned online that the prices for airfares you search for may not be the lowest possible because airlines and airfare search sites plant cookies that make them aware you are a repeat surfer, and therefore they boost the price on you. So I, a diehard Chrome user, switched to Safari. However, either because Microsoft no longer supports Vista or Safari or something, when I clicked on the "Hacked Fair" deal, it wouldn't budge. The damn browser froze on me.
So I went to Chrome, which worked. And (this is where I might lose you guys; I admit I didn't have my thinking totally together) because I had already used Kayak that afternoon and I didn't want to take the time to clear out my cookies because I didn't know if the computer would crash, I decided to go to this recommended airfare search engine that I had never used before: Momondo. That site did not have the power to piece together round trips on two different airlines, like Kayak did. However, they found an all-United flight, MSP-LAX, for $315. With the $100 re-registration fee, that would have been a dollar more expensive that Kayak's "Hacked Fare" plus the $200 I was mentally adding in to get all my United miles back. (Remember that the "Hacked Fare" would not have counted to getting all my miles back because the requirement was a round-trip ticket.) The United rep said I had 18 months to decide whether or not I wanted to just buy my miles back at $200, but if I was liable to forget not to let my miles expire, I was liable to forget not to let my miles ... uh, expire expire.
The rep also told me that I could book and then re-register for $100, and that was what I was going to do. The $315 ticket was being offered on a third-party site (just like the LAX-HKG ticket), and I didn't think too much of it. However, I then looked at the English on this third-party site (which felt British to me), and I started to look at all the typos. That raised a red flag with me. I then noticed that the page wasn't secure; there was no "lock" icon at the front of the URL field. (This is when I freaked and remembered that I did not notice that same lock when I booked my overseas flight. The ticket number checks out with China Eastern and so far, there are no hinky fees on my credit card.) Finally, when I put in my credit card number, the wrong credit card popped out. How could these guys get that wrong? At that point, I got too scared, and I didn't book.
That's when I remembered one tip about finding the cheapest airfares: Sometimes you should try the airlines themselves. So I went to United's website. I found the precise flights and times to get to LAX and then return to MSP. And the total was ... $287. You know, sometimes third-party websites do not get you the cheapest tickets.
So, all told, the flights from MSP to LAX and then to HKG (with a change of planes in Shanghai) and back, plus the $100 re-registration fee through United cost me just a shade less than $850. That was around the lowest price I saw when I first began looking. There is one major sacrifice I made: The cheapest price, which became so because I procrastinated, was not a Saturday departure date but a Friday one. Therefore, my plan of at least getting through an entire final week at work is gone; that Thursday will be my last day. Also, there still could be a wrench in the works. I arrive at LAX only two hours and change before I depart for Shanghai and then Hong Kong. I would have to travel from the domestic side to the international terminal, and from the looks of it, it could be a long haul. Plus I am travelling on a Friday, and in an airport I haven't been in in two decades. Finally, of course, there are the security issues, piled on doubly so because I am going to a different country. Will two hours be enough to make my connection? And what if my parents decide they want me to take a whole suitcase of stuff with me to give to my family in Hong Kong, which they are likely to do?
Well, this is my anxiety taking over. I still have a lot to worry about, and a lot of things that can go wrong. But at least the first step, deciding to do this, is done. It took me a long time, but I did it.
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