NOVEMBER 8, TUESDAY

ON LINE ALICE IN WONDERLAND

This week Susie, Todd and I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the three month trip we are making to India and and Europe in January, February and March. We already have the cheapest ticket we could get on United starting on January 10 when the fares come down after the Christmas holiday until April 5 when they start going up for the summer holidays. I’ve already stumbled through that a few days ago.

Now we are trying to settle on the flights from Paris to Delhi and back to Paris with a stopover in Helsinki on the way way back.

For the Paris to Delhi flight we have from experience two choices of places where we can stopover on the way without paying extra: Helsinki on Finnair and Istanbul on Turkish Air. We’ve stopped over at each place in the past.

So this time, because the economy I light fare was cheaper on Finnair than on Turkish Airlines we chose Finnair. On a number of travel sites the Finland Stopover for five days was highly recommended.

What I was after was the $560 economy light round trip ticket that I had already found with a free 5 day stopover in Helsinki at no extra cost. But when I tried to nail down the flight to find out the cheapest days to do it the Stopover option, pictured so clearly on the travel sites was no where to be found. Not only that but when I found what we wanted on Google Flights, I could book the stopover as a multicity flight but only for $780. The round trip on light economy was $560 but the exact same flights with a stopover in Helsinki as multicity listed no economy light and cost $780.

I was not dealing with a travel agent, I had only Google Flights. When I tried to find the same flights on the Finnair website, the website wouldn’t let me do it. I was in Alice in Wonderland with nothing being what it said it was and nothing making any sense.

My only recourse was to chat with an agent. But of course chat didn’t mean chat, either. Chatting is talking to someone. But Finnair didn’t want to talk to me. They wanted to chat on line which meant I would first explain myself to a bot named Sisu although why a machine needs a name or even has a name beats me. Sisu almost immediately realized she couldn’t handle my question and turned me over to an agent. Where in the world this agent was I have no idea but I bet in the Philippines, and I had to wait for him quite a long time. The agent finally came on and we began typing back and forth and he assured me that my only option was to pay $780 for the multi flight ticket without explaining why.

I thought about this awhile, trying to figure out what was going on. I finally realized that whenever I tried to book the same route and flights on multi city that I could book on economy light for $560 that when I added a stopover I was bumped off economy light and moved up $150 or so to economy classic. Some algorhythm was forcing this.

I chatted again with someone else without satisfaction, then puzzled my way along for awhile reading more on line and realized that there was no stopover program, it had just vanished from the website and I also now discovered that I couldn’t get a ticket through Finnair in any case. Finnair for some reason wasn’t able to sell me their own flight. I would have to go to what they called a travel agent but what I call Expedia or Travelocity or Booking.com.

So I went to Travelocity and lo and behold the $780 ticket was now $703. Travel sites were selling tickets for a different price than the airline itself.

I chatted again, each time so far with a different person and asked what was going on. This person gave me a way out. I could book Paris-Delhi-Helsinki on one ticket and Helsinki-Paris on another ticket and not book multicity at all and stay in economy light. She said that I could do this for $591, thirty more than the $560 that had at first seemed possible. I thanked her and tried it

Alas, I couldn’t do what she suggested I could do. I could book two tickets but their combined price came almost to $780. How she found the cheaper ticket I don’t know.

So that is where I am now. This is twice on this trip I have been in Alice in Wonderland. The ticket that was $703 on Travelocity yesterday has become $734 today, but by changing the flight from Paris to Delhi from March 1 to March 2 the entire ticket today has come down to $672.

Who knows what it will be tomorrow and I’ve been working on this for so long that tomorrow is almost here.