BOOKING A FLIGHT
(Wednesday) I spent way too much time today trying to find and book a flight to Calgary for a meeting in December. After consulting bestfares.com I narrowed my search to six airlines. Then I checked flights and prices against my schedule and budget. And I ended up finding the nearly ideal combination on Air Canada.

So I proceeded to make the reservation and buy the ticket. But their system kept giving me error messages directing me to back-up and reenter information. It was really frustrating but after a phone call to their tech people I got past the glitch in their system and made my reservation.

Fast forward a couple of hours -- the fax machine cranks out three reservation confirmation letters. Apparently all of that back-tracking in their system had created three reservations. I called customer service and eventually got to talk with a nice human being who straightened it all out (she even got me aisle seats).

A new itinerary was issued -- and this time I noticed that all the flights were really United flights (Air Canada has a code sharing agreement with them). But when I had searched the United site earlier, with the same criteria I had entered on the Air Canada site, they didn't show the flights I ended up buying. So I had to go to Canada in order to get the flight I wanted on an American based-airline.

Do you ever wonder why travelers get frustrated with the airlines? If only Southwest were flying to Calgary I'd be a happy camper.