The hunt for cheap tickets to India

So I was trying to buy tickets to India last week. I, like every other person, want to get there cheaply and as hassle-free as possible. Unfortunately, arranging that is not easy.

The world of international flight ticketing works in mysterious ways.

Some websites like Travelocity, have a flexible date search (which makes for cheap flights) for flights to Delhi, but not Kolkata. If one sets November as the departure date, one cannot get January return date, because the webpage only has November and December dates.

AA.com has a flexible date search, but maximum length of trip is fixed at 30 days.

globetravels.com has a search engine that lists fairly high fares. They also list some very low fares on top of those results. Those fares are available only for manual booking. So I fill out a form and send it over to them. They call me next day, saying we have found you this 5 connection flight that is about the same price that you saw with the more straight-forward itineraries on our website.

BA.com has a good search that lets you trade-off travel dates and prices. Unfortunately, they were the first ones to run out of good fares. One day I saw fares that were $1400 /per person to Delhi and next day they were up at $1700 / per person. Busted. Besides, I do not want to fly BA because of the jinx.

So off I go again hunting for low fares. I am resigned to my fate that I cannot get the dates I want any more. Seems every one else in the world wants to travel on the same dates. I call a friend for a reference to a travel agent. They took two days and cam back with a almost equally convoluted route as globetravels.com . I tried a few more websites. Farecompare.com and Vayama.com seemed to have the best searches, but even they were not good enough.

I also tried to get some tickets using my miles on United. They had routings via Denver-Toronto-Zurich-Vienna-Delhi . I am surprised, the routing didn't include Siberia.

AA has tie up with Jet Airways. So one can get tickets on AA to many places in India, but not all that Jet flies to. Finally I bought my tickets on aa.com for a reasonable $1610 / per person. The price, I have to go from Bhubaneswar to Calcutta to Delhi, spending one day in getting out of India and then a 12 hr layover in Chicago.

So if you are buying tickets to India my friend, it pays to be early. This is one case where procrastination does not work.

My saga with British Airways

So last week I was trying to buy tickets to India. It reminded me of my jinxed history with British Airways.

I did my first ever international flight on BA from Calcutta to London. It was delayed 3 hrs (because of a faulty door, if I remember correctly) and I missed my connection from London to Denver. They were nice enough to put me up at the Renaissance and provided transport vouchers for the trip there. I got on a plane the next day and got to Denver.

The second time I flew BA was in 2003. They had a strike of the ground staff in London and flights were cancelled for two days. No hotels this time. Just a voucher that I didn't get time to redeem. I stayed with a friend (Prateek, if you read this please contact me +1 970 372 6308). Their phone did not work. So I spent most of the 2 days at the airport, hoping to get on the next flight.

Then my mom came for a visit in 2007 by BA. She had to because the people she was traveling with were on BA. The plan was for both of us to back via BA. Unfortunately, I bought my tickets via the travel agent in India that she bought her tickets on. Big mistake. Not only was communicating over a 12 hr time difference incredibly difficult, I failed to realize that I needed a visa to transit in the UK. I did realize that, but 1 day too late. I sent the application in a hurry. I later found that the UK visa office will give a 1 day turn around if one uses a courier but 5 days if one sends by priority overnight. So, of course, I got my visa 1 day after I was supposed to travel. Duly stamped and everything. I had to do a fairly acrimonious negotiation with the BA CSR to postpone my ticket (a no-show non-refundable ticket is useless) to a future date. Since BA was booked for all days I wanted to travel on, I had to again postpone that ticket to 2008 and buy a separate ticket on US airways.

Fast forward to last week. I found out that tickets are ony valid for 12 months from date of first issue (Aug 2007) in my case and there is no way to get around that.

So there you go. I think BA and I have a jinxed relationship. I will not fly BA again.