So B and I are heading off to lovely Barcelona (pictured) in a few weeks-- our first "real" holiday this year, the end of a very busy work stretch for her, and a bit of a capstone for an extremely weird month for me (more on that later, maybe). I've had some frequent flier miles accumulating for some time, and due to this particular airline's general lack of German service and the fact that these reward miles were due to lapse sooner than later, I pulled the trigger and chose to get us some free intra-Europe travel. Or so I thought.
I really shouldn't complain that much, but the airline-- I'll be a gentleman and not name the offending party here-- I'd like to think that I'm above that after all-- ended up charging my credit card $212 for these free reward tickets. In essence I paid for the taxes on the tickets only, plus a ridiculous $50 "assistance fee" which was completely unavoidable for someone in my predicament-- one can not make or claim international reward reservations without operator assistance. While I can begrudgingly see the logic in this airline's procedures, I truly do not appreciate them. Lufthansa, to name but one example, doesn't charge taxes for their frequent flier award travel.
To add a layer of intrigue and insult to this experience, this airline doesn't have any partners that fly into Nuremberg, so we have to hightail it down to Munich to get our reward flight, which means either an additional 56 Euros in train fare or 90+ minutes of driving each way and a roughly equivalent amount in long-term parking fees. The only airline partner that flies from Munich to Barcelona is the notorious Iberia Airlines, renowned for their indifferent customer service. I actually asked about the possibility of flying a different partner, Finnair, which routed the same flight via Helsinki (which is sort of like going from New Orleans to Phoenix via Boston) but no dice.
All in all, I think it'll be an adventure and at the end of the day, what amounts to be 75 Euros per plane ticket is chump change compared to the full fare prices we were looking at. It was so good that we actually bumped up the hotel budget to treat ourselves to the swankiness we deserve. And years of traveling in cattle class has systematically lowered my expectations of the glamor of air travel-- it's Greyhound with wings, really. More on Barcelona as it happens!
2 comments:
You sound like a perfect candidate for a "cash rewards" type of card, ol boy. :) Screw the AA mileage card.
rw
Nah, I don't travel with these assclowns enough to warrant the bother of getting one of those. This trip effectively burns up most of my miles anyways on this airline alliance which has pretty thin central/western European coverage-- henceforth, I will accrue miles primarily on the "other" 2 airline freq. flier alliances.
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