Tuesday, April 07, 2009

A Close Shave

My travel agent and I had been engaged in oodles of research for my ticket to the UK, scouring the Internet and flight websites to find the best deal to Glasgow in the peak of summer!

There were all sorts of variables to consider. The charter airlines like Air Transat had the cheap fares, but their baggage allowance was negligible for a girl trying to move multiple pairs of shoes across the Atlantic! The larger airlines had the right amount of baggage allowance, but either the connection times were too short or too long, or the price was too high or there was something else that wasn't quite right.

Finally, after much searching and changing around the travel dates a number of times, we found the best fare on KLM via Amsterdam for a July 15th departure arriving into Glasgow on July 16th in the afternoon. Ironically, it was July 16th 2001 when we arrived in to Toronto from Bombay - so I guess that's some sort of auspicious travel time for me!

I gave my credit card details to the agent and told her to go ahead with the booking.

About 15 minutes later, I happen to check my yahoo inbox and see a Facebook message from a friend. Try Icelandair was all it said.

I looked at the message, but didn't really pay too much attention. After all, I'd just made the booking. Still, my curiosity got the better of me, and I went to their website and punched in my travel dates. The result came up, and I nearly had a coronary.

It was $600 cheaper than the KLM fare!

I was on the phone to the travel agent in an instant yelling Stop the Presses.........don't process the payment.............praying the entire time that she hadn't been trigger happy with my credit card number!

Thankfully, she hadn't, and so after checking to make sure that I'd have the same baggage allowance as KLM was offering and that there were no extra hidden fees, she booked me on the Icelandair flight.

So I'm now officially leaving on July 14 2009. 99 days till liftoff!





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