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Smile-breaks

Best Time to Book a Flight - Between Midnight and 2 a.m.???

     It’s the middle of the night. Huge decisions to make. The computer screen is getting fuzzier and fuzzier. Do I want the flight that arrives at four in the afternoon or the one that gets me there at eight in the evening?

     Well, of course four is better. Lots easier to find the hotel in an alien city with the sun in full beam. But it costs more. And you have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the airport in time.

     That article about how to get the lowest airfares said the best time to book a flight is between midnight and two a.m. on Wednesdays. As I sat at my computer, half asleep, it occurred to me that the article hadn’t said whether they meant midnight East Coast Time or West Coast Time.

     Gee, maybe I could’ve done this three hours ago.
Oh well, either way - here I was, bleary-eyed, studying airline fares and itineraries while everyone else in the house was snoring happily.

     I clicked the “Purchase” button for the 4 p.m. arrival and went through all the screens and filled in all the little boxes with red asterisks and a few without and finally I arrived at the end. My airfare was about to become a good-sized number on my VISA statement.

     Something flashed across the screen.

     “Please note: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the price for the flight you selected is no longer available. Please check the new rates below.”

     Well, you and I know the prices hadn’t gone down. But here I was and I really wanted to get this done and go to bed, so I sucked it in and scrolled down to the bottom of the page.

     Three thousand dollars?!!!

     There must be a mistake. There had to be a mistake. Maybe they scheduled me for six one-way flights instead of three roundtrip flights. That could do it. That was probably it.

     I went back and started over, making sure to check the “round trip” box. The prices were the same as before, $367 for a roundtrip flight. It took a while, because someone – I don’t know who - had emptied all those little boxes while I was gone.

     At the final page, the screen came up once more. Good. All clear.

     I should’ve hit that button faster ’cause before I could tap the key, that message flashed onto the screen again.

     “Please note: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the price for the flight you selected is no longer available. Please check the new rates below.”

     At my second sighting of the three thousand dollar price, I abruptly left Wanderocity and hurried over to SouthNorth Airlines’ website. SouthNorth’s flight itineraries were impossible to read at one-thirty in the morning.

     The print was tiny, on a dark orange background, and there were all these little bubble circles for you to “x.” Most of the cheap ones were x-ed out, so you couldn’t get the good deals. And there was no place to choose your seats.

     This thing about booking between midnight and two a.m. was a bunch of hogwash! Or else it really was East Coast time and I missed it by three hours.

     Forget SouthNorth. I went over to BB Airlines. If this one didn’t work, I was going to bed.

     Well, I got the seats and I got a halfway good price and how I did it is another whole story, but I know it’s past your bedtime so I’ll wait and tell you about it later.

     Tune in next Wednesday - between midnight and two a.m. would be good.

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