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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Tips on travel agents or online tickets?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-15-2008 05:58 AM
Trying to book a long-haul trip with only a week's notice makes it unlikely that you'll get a very good price, I'm afraid.
I've used two online flight booking services, one very good and the other not so.
The one I'd advise avoiding like a barge pole is Expedia. When I booked tickets for a conference in September last year about three months in advance, Expedia were offering £340 return for MME-BRU-PHX-ROC - a full £200 cheaper than KLM/Northwest, which I normally use. So I decided to give them a try. Two months later I got an email out of the blue saying that there'd been a clerical error, that this fare wasn't available after all, and did I want to pay them an extra £300 or have my booking cancelled and my card recredited? Of course by that time the other airlines' price had shot up, and I ended up paying over £800 for KLM/NW - £200 more than if I'd just booked with them in the first place.
KLM's own booking site, on the other hand, has always been completely reliable and hassle-free in my experience. It's sometimes £10-20 more than a big flight shop site for the same trip, but it usually offers you slightly better connections and you can ask for an exit row seat (essential for me, being 6'3") during the booking process.
However, given that NW has just been taken over by Delta, it might be an idea to stay clear of them until the merger of their two route systems has been done and any short-term teething troubles are out of the way.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/534a.jpg)
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-29-2008 01:21 AM
Don't go anywhere near Heathrow if you can possibly help it. There are five different terminals: getting between any two requires a bus, taxi or train (or a long - as in, a mile plus - walk through underground walkways). Many airlines won't check your baggage through a connection, the immigration queues for non-EU arriving passengers can be horrendous and tales of delays and lost baggage are par for the course. As if that wasn't enough, the industrial relations situation there is volatile: there have been several wildcat strikes in the last few years, all of which caused major disruption. The runways are operating at around 95% capacity, which means that any minor incident or bad weather causes chaos.
For the last five years or so now I've connected through Amsterdam to and from long-haul flights, and have only once had any problem (in probably 20-30 trips). The whole airport is a single terminal under one roof, making for easy connections. The walks can be quite long, but there's an ample supply of free luggage carts. The only thing to watch is that if you're connecting from a flight from a non-Schengen area destination to one within the Schengen area, you have to go through passport control to get to the Schengen gates, and the queue for this can be long (especially early on a weekday morning, when all the long hauls have just landed). KLM reckon that allowing a 45-minute connection time is enough, but I once found out the hard way that it wasn't.
As for Expedia, I guess I was probably in a minority in having had a bad experience with them; either that or their UK setup is not as good as their US one. But I was seriously unimpressed that they turned round and said they wouldn't honour my (fully paid for) booking, months after I'd made it. Most other travel agents will rebook you at their expense if something like that happens, even if the letter of the law says they don't have to.
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Richard Hamilton
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1341
From: Evansville, Indiana
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 05-08-2008 01:38 PM
Leo, I talked with the Consulate in Chicago before my last post. I tried to explain what I needed, which is a long term multi-entry visa. She said the Business visa is good for 3 months, multiple entries. I informed her that I will be going several times throughout the year and was asking about that, and if the theater calls for an emergency visit, how do I go? I don't want to send my passport to the consulate every three months to get a new visa stamped in it. She said "no problem, get your visa when you arrive in Alexandria", and also suggested that I talk to my employer in Egypt about what to do. She basically didn't give me any info.
I know I can just arrive with my passport, but most "tourists" don't go through customs with a box full of tools to sightsee. I just want to be as prepared as possible. I can usually talk my way through customs, because I'm not doing anything wrong. It's just that being an American and travelling by myself, I'm just slightly anxious about this trip.
Rick
EDIT Never mind my last 2 posts about the visa. I just talked to a friend who did the video work at the theater and he said he always just buys the visa when he arrives in Egypt. Thanks Leo
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