booking flights
Now that Christian's back, we could finally go about booking all our travel for the early fall. I am on sabbatical (woohoo!) and in September I have a conference in Tuscany for a week, then a week break, followed by a weeklong conference in Graz. After that, I was planning on staying in Graz for another 3 weeks or so to get a lot of research done with Geroldinger and Co. Christian wanted to come with me to Tuscany and then for that following week, we'd vacation in some places in northern Italy.
The booking process was lengthy, because we had to determine where we'd end up at the end of those two weeks that would be a) reasonably priced for Christian's return to the US, and b) reasonably close for me to take the train to Graz. We finally settled on ending our vacation in Venice, which we've never been to. The next step was booking two separate itineraries with the same departing flights, but different ending flights. Here's where the snags began.
We got reasonably priced flights for both of us, with only one layover each way from Newark. Christian's was available at that price only through Expedia. Mine was available at that price through Orbitz (which still doesn't show you the fare class -- rather annoying if you want to make sure you get 100% credit for a flight with a partner airline). Both got booked, but we were unable to select seats at the time of booking because we were on non-airline sites. No problem -- I had done this before and you just wait for the airline-specific confirmation code and then view the booking through the airline's website to select flights. Well, Christian's flight was entirely on SWISS and mine was SWISS out, Lufthansa back in. We booked those airlines because they serve alcohol and decent food for free, have generally great customer service, and we get lounge perks due to being Star Alliance Gold. But here I discovered a new wrinkle. As of this summer, Lufthansa, SWISS, Lot and all their linked airlines have decided to start charging you for the benefit of selecting your seat. Based on your fare class, LH won't even let you pay to select your seat until 48 hours before the flight. Meanwhile, SWISS allows you to pay ($9 per European flight, $29 per international) to select your seats rather than let yourself fall into the lottery of seats left at checkin. This was crap, but even more annoyingly, being Star Alliance Gold does not exclude you from these charges. After United's reduction of benefits to Star Alliance Gold members this spring, these alliances don't look like they're destined for very long (or at least, that they'll have any benefits for passengers other than codeshares and luggage handling).
On top of this, you had to deal with SWISS's or Lufthansa's "improved" new websites, which somehow have managed to take crap websites and make them even worse. Lufthansa wouldn't allow me to switch Frequent Flyer info to anything but Lufthansa's. SWISS allows you to pick the seats but then when you go to pay, the "summary" that you get for the purchase is just "Item: seat selection", not actually telling you what seats were selected. We coughed up the money just to be together on the transatlantic flight, but while I got a confirmation for the payment on my seats, I never got a confirmation for payment on Christian's seats. I even called customer service to request another receipt email be sent, and so far haven't gotten it. My card's been charged though and the seats show, though if their system has a glitch, I have no proof of the seat assignments. This is such crap.
On a side note, I learned that the Italian city of Livorno has been traditionally called Leghorn in English. Bizarre.
The booking process was lengthy, because we had to determine where we'd end up at the end of those two weeks that would be a) reasonably priced for Christian's return to the US, and b) reasonably close for me to take the train to Graz. We finally settled on ending our vacation in Venice, which we've never been to. The next step was booking two separate itineraries with the same departing flights, but different ending flights. Here's where the snags began.
We got reasonably priced flights for both of us, with only one layover each way from Newark. Christian's was available at that price only through Expedia. Mine was available at that price through Orbitz (which still doesn't show you the fare class -- rather annoying if you want to make sure you get 100% credit for a flight with a partner airline). Both got booked, but we were unable to select seats at the time of booking because we were on non-airline sites. No problem -- I had done this before and you just wait for the airline-specific confirmation code and then view the booking through the airline's website to select flights. Well, Christian's flight was entirely on SWISS and mine was SWISS out, Lufthansa back in. We booked those airlines because they serve alcohol and decent food for free, have generally great customer service, and we get lounge perks due to being Star Alliance Gold. But here I discovered a new wrinkle. As of this summer, Lufthansa, SWISS, Lot and all their linked airlines have decided to start charging you for the benefit of selecting your seat. Based on your fare class, LH won't even let you pay to select your seat until 48 hours before the flight. Meanwhile, SWISS allows you to pay ($9 per European flight, $29 per international) to select your seats rather than let yourself fall into the lottery of seats left at checkin. This was crap, but even more annoyingly, being Star Alliance Gold does not exclude you from these charges. After United's reduction of benefits to Star Alliance Gold members this spring, these alliances don't look like they're destined for very long (or at least, that they'll have any benefits for passengers other than codeshares and luggage handling).
On top of this, you had to deal with SWISS's or Lufthansa's "improved" new websites, which somehow have managed to take crap websites and make them even worse. Lufthansa wouldn't allow me to switch Frequent Flyer info to anything but Lufthansa's. SWISS allows you to pick the seats but then when you go to pay, the "summary" that you get for the purchase is just "Item: seat selection", not actually telling you what seats were selected. We coughed up the money just to be together on the transatlantic flight, but while I got a confirmation for the payment on my seats, I never got a confirmation for payment on Christian's seats. I even called customer service to request another receipt email be sent, and so far haven't gotten it. My card's been charged though and the seats show, though if their system has a glitch, I have no proof of the seat assignments. This is such crap.
On a side note, I learned that the Italian city of Livorno has been traditionally called Leghorn in English. Bizarre.