BUYING TICKETS

Back on the road...

I usually buy my tickets directly through the carrier because they are cheaper and the follow-up / service is much better. My preferred airline is Continental J. However, I was booking a last-minute flight and did not want to pay more than a thousand dollars for a flight, so I found a deal on Expedia to take Delta there and Continental back. I saved maybe 20 dollars. What Expedia failed to do, though, was tell me that the Delta flight that they booked for me was actually a Continental ticket, nor did they give me a ticket number – I just got an Expedia order number, which Delta and Continental did not understand. So I couldn’t check in online through Delta. Nor could I check-in with Continental. I spent an hour on the phone waiting to get through to a Delta person just to find that I needed to call Expedia… What a pain. I couldn’t check-in through the kiosk, and the person behind the Delta counter had trouble finding my reservation. I ended up missing my flight and paying $25 dollars to change my flight to the next one two hours later. My days of buying tickets through Expedia are over. Travelocity isn’t much better. I’m not a big fan of Delta out of JFK either. Old terminal, long + slow security lines. If you see an "SSSS" on the corner of your Delta ticket, you have been specially selected for security screening. Not sure that it stands for that, but it sucks.

Lesson 1: Buy directly through the airlines!
Lesson 2: Fly Continental out of Newark