The Ins and Outs of Booking an Airline Ticket

An article in this weekend's New York Times Travel Section discusses strategies for getting the best seats when you fly. It seems that seat 20A is the best way to go if you're flying a 737. But you've got to be quick to get it, and now that this article has been published, you'll probably also need Elite Status. If you're flying Southwest, you can pay another company to check in for you and increase your chances of getting a better seat. My personal favorite is the bulkhead section -- plenty of room to stretch your legs and if you have the window seat you can usually make your way to the washroom without forcing the entire row to join you. It's been a while since I've been able to secure a seat in the bulkhead. Evidently people with babies need it more...

Seatguru is a good resource if you're really concerned about your seat choice. They offer detailed maps of every flight out there so you can get a preview of what you're in for. They have colour-coded each seat to indicate 'good seat', 'be aware' and 'poor seat'. By the time you have finished doing all this research and figuring out how to obtain the optimal seat, you may as well have driven to your destination. At least then you could stop at your choice of fast-food venues along the way rather than having to pay for the stale sandwich option on board.

We had our own experience with the airlines this weekend while trying to book a flight back to Canada for a funeral. It seems that Air Canada no longer offers bereavement fares. Of course, if you are booking a flight these days with only two day's notice you are looking at a $1,200+ cost minimum for a cross-continental flight. $1350 to be exact -- per seat. That's more than a decent vacation in Mexico! Of course you can't book points either -- those were all gone at least 6 months ago.

American Airlines does offer bereavement fares - $900 per ticket. A bit better I guess, but still more than I have ever paid for a flight (not including corporate travel one someone else's tab). You can get points tickets on AA -- they must put aside more than Air Canada's two seats per flight for points holders -- but you pay a $150 penalty for booking less than 21 days in advance (on top of the charges you pay just to use your points). After 4 hours of trying to find the cheapest, easiest connection to Toronto (including potentially buying two one-way segments and a round trip points ticket which straddled over the labour day weekend, when we will be returning again), we settled on this option. At some point though, is it really worth collecting all these airline miles?