The problem has been finding the right time. Last year, in the throes of the pandemic and with the airline industry desperate as hell to raise any money they can, they slashed prices to wherever they went, and people still didn't fly. That didn't stop me from booking flights, however. I simply could not pass up the fire sales Southwest (that is the airline I have always flew on when travelling to St. Louis) were doling out all last year. And my thinking the first time I booked a flight was that if somehow a miracle cure came along and the whole pandemic ended in six months, I'd be totally ready to fly for dirt cheap.
Well, I was indeed hoping against hope, and as any pie-in-the-sky hopes that a vaccine would be developed by the fall, it became clear that it would be downright stupid to be flying with coronavirus floating around. It was around the time I thought of cancelling the reservation that Southwest gave me an offer: If I don't want to fly, they would convert the money I spent on the ticket into miles I would automatically bank. Sold.
Didn't stop Southwest from posting yet another sale, and I booked it, this time for late January. Maybe I just needed to wait for a vaccine another three months? Uh, no dice. Yet there was a wrinkle with this one. Early on in the pandemic Southwest blocked the sale of all middle seats on the plane. But in October, as more people were willing to risk the healthy and safety of others and themselves, they lifted that restriction. Because of that, however, they were willing to offer full refunds -- not miles conversions, but no-questions-asked refunds -- for people who refuse to fly with people in the middle seats. Honestly, that was a secondary reason to cancel. I mainly used it to get out of a flight I really had no business taking.
But there was another sale, around New Year's Day, and I bought one for a trip that was supposed to take off in, well, a couple weeks, actually. The vaccines were beginning to roll out, so I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I still couldn't time out when I could get my shots, so I could not foresee if I would be fully vaccinated by the time my flight rolled around. Here, I kind of got bailed out by another Southwest blindside. For some reason (probably lockdown-related), Southwest converted my flight from a non-stop one to one that lays over in Chicago Midway. There is no reason to suffer through a stopover to get to a city as close to the Twin Cities as St. Louis is. So, on principle, I cancelled again. But this time there were no offers to convert money to miles to give all my money back. I had to take the money I spent on this flight in the form of a credit I have to use by New Year's Day.
So great. I have to use the money, about eighty bucks, on a trip to ... well, probably St. Louis before the year is out. But my parents seem to be itching to get out of here, Vegas or China or wherever, and they might not want to come back until 2022. Meanwhile, I have heard that rental cars are virtually non-existent right now -- hell, I've even heard a couple stories of people who have had their rental car reservations yanked right from under them once they got to the counter. This shortage, experts say, won't be eased until ... next year. But by next year I could be out eighty bucks.
Ah, what to do, what to do to get to the Loo. ...
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