Fat man
Last week's goal was to book flights from somewhere close by (perhaps Frankfurt) to Auckland, with a week’s stopover before heading on to Christchurch and returning to Frankfurt from there.
Still lots of operators on the market here, so it is a hard job separating the wheat from the chaff. A number of sites whose names I cannot remember for the life of me still entice you in with a good-sounding offer which immediately becomes 100 € more expensive when you try to book it; forget it. The proffered excuse – that in the meantime the cheap tickets have been booked out – reeks of dishonesty. And the same prices crop up when you start a new inquiry. I don’t know how these sites manage to survive, but it just goes to show that there is still enough stupidity around for black sheep to sponge off of.
With those sites out of the way, there is still the choice of a direct booking with an airline, or with a reputable agency. I had a look at Air New Zealand, but their multistop flight booking page seems to require major brain surgery, at least at first. With that out of the way, a couple of spectacular round the world flights come into view; unfortunately the prices are similarly spectacular and involve long waits. Back to the agents.
Fat man
One prominent advertiser is fluege.de, but they do not seem to do Y-flights. Nor do they realise how appalling their mascot choice is. For some reason, there is sort of an “anything goes” approach to advertising in this country. In any case, the sight of two-dinners and three-seats Rainer Calmund giving the thumbs up makes me want to weigh up the pros and cons of sharing a cell with Kim Dotcom. No, fluege.de I am not sharing my row with this fat man, nor my lunch, nor even the aeroplane.
On to opodo.de, which does have Y-flights, and also does allow a Rail & Fly option which significantly reduces the cost of the 3-hour train journey to Frankfurt. The only thing that makes me suspicious is that every day of the week is a Sunday in their calendar, and that nobody cares, because this has been this way for as long as I can remember.
Month of Sundays
So a reasonable flight chosen (with Qantas), then through the entire booking system and in the end it transpires that there is no Rail & Fly for the return journey! Opodo’s communications system is completely overloaded, so it takes them more than 24 hours to reply to an email, by which time booking the extra rail ticket attracts its own surcharge. Opodo? Fail! Is it really that difficult to put together a comprehensive booking system that doesn’t require the customer to constantly check and double-check every time and still results in erroneous and incomplete bookings? If so, then I’ll go directly to Deutsche Bahn next time; at least their prices are comparable and you can see what you order.