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FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Is there a search engine that will let me search for flights that return before a specific time? To be specific, I'm looking at a round trip between BWI and MSP leaving the 23rd of August and returning on the 27th. The flight needs to land in BWI before 9 AM, otherwise the departure will need to be on the 26th. But I can't find a way to put that criteria in on any search engines. I can generally say "I want to depart after this time" but not "I want to depart before this time."

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FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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You could also take Amtrak from Detroit to Chicago and save the hassle of parking your car in Chicago for that long. The Amtrak Wolverine has 3 daily trips between Detroit and Chicago.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Nice Davis posted:

This is true, although I would caution that the Wolverine has a habit of getting delayed in northwest Indiana, so make sure you aren't cutting it close with your trip

e: Also, what is a more disappointing way to follow up the wonderful experience of taking Japanese trains: taking Amtrak, or driving on the interstate? Neither comes close to measuring up to the shinkansen. :smith:

Hasn't that route been upgraded to run at 110 MPH in some places? Though still no comparison.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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So I'm looking at booking a ticket for late June/early July that goes BWI>DEN>MSP>BWI. I'm not sure on dates yet, but would there be any trick to booking a multi-city trip?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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It's for a very price conscious friend of mine, and she's got no problem with Southwest (it's what she used bwi>msp last time she visited) so I'll give that a try. I'll poke at some more travel sites and see what comes out.

I did some googling and it looks like southwest fares are the same if you book round trip or two one ways, so I priced out each leg and got to around 600 total, not sure if anybody could beat any particular leg of that.

E: Southwest doesn't even have schedules that far out, currently they only go to June 4, so this is probably way to soon to start searching. ITA Matrix gives me $591 currently, United BWI to DEN, American DEN to MSP, US Airways MSP to BWI. Nice that ITA gives me price per flight, so even if they won't search Southwest, I can compare the per flight price to find a deal on Southwest.

FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Nov 16, 2013

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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I assume he means when purchased on any Tuesday. Like buying today would be cheaper than yesterday or tomorrow. I've heard that before but no idea if it's true or not.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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And a question of my own:

I know you can sometimes save money by booking a flight with a stop and then just not using the second flight. For this to work your destination would have to be some sort of hub, right? So flying MSP>PIT I couldn't save anything like that because no airline has a hub in PIT. But on the way back maybe I could since MSP is a hub?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Mackieman posted:

A hub or focus city isn't required in the true sense of the word, but there aren't a ton of onward flights from non-hub or non-focus cities that airlines tend to market very effectively. For example, you could buy SFO-AUS-IAH and throw away the AUS-IAH segment, but it's pretty rare that the airline search engine (UA in this case) will show you that routing. You have to search multi-city itineraries for that sort of thing to happen. I also wouldn't make a habit of doing this as it can piss off the airline if you do it a lot.

Delta can get me there and back, non-stop, for $383 round trip. I don't think it's worth pissing off an airline to try and get that any lower.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Cometa Rossa posted:

I'm looking for Vancouver to Lyon (Seattle or Paris can substitute if need be) for February 6 - 16. The lowest I can find is around $950 and it's not getting any cheaper, I would've thought this would be an inexpensive time to go to Europe.

What about taking the TGV from Paris to Lyon, since it looks like you end up going through Paris on the way there. I imagine that would be cheaper and shorter (considering the layover) then flying that branch.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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So I've got a flight booked on Delta for my wife and I in the middle of March. However one of us may end up flying out earlier than the other. I don't see a way to do this online, is it something that could be easily done by calling them?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Ah gently caress, it turns out my tickets are non-refundable, so it's another $200 to make a change on the ticket. I'm guessing there's no way around that? I don't have any standing with Delta to try and leverage.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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The fare is actually $60 cheaper, so at least they'll be nice enough to only charge me $140.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Id be flying early to visit a friend, but I bought both tickets because I just assumed I could easily switch.

WHY DIDN'T ANYONE WARN ME DESPITE MY NEVER ASKING? ;)

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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I'm gonna try my next flight with no checked baggage, so I guess I need some tips on that. Specifically, how do you deal with stuff like toothpaste and deodorant? I know you can get shampoo and conditioner at the hotel, but what about all the other stuff I need to keep myself groomed?

And then packing a small amount of clothes is another problem, but I think I can figure that one out (just don't pack so many clothes, dufus!).

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Hmmm, for some reason I thought the 3 in 3-1-1 was a quantity, not the volume. I guess that won't be too hard then. Now just gotta figure out if my Timbuk2 bag is good enough or if I should get something specifically for flying.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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sellouts posted:

Timbuk2 is a good bag if you want everything wrinkled. I used to lug it around and it's just plain uncomfortable in my opinion but maybe I just didn't know how to properly organize and pack then.

I went with a Tom Bihn TriStar and it owns. I can pack a ton of clothes + my laptop and shoes and more. It's expensive but the best travel upgrade I've made since global entry / tsa precheck.

Packing cubes are your friend!

Edit: you'd also be surprised what hotels have at the front desk if you ask. Toothbrush, tooth paste, shaving kit, etc. not as good as home mostly but great in a pinch

I don't travel nearly enough to justify spending that much on a carry on (at that price I'd be better off just checking luggage) but I was looking at this bag: http://www.amazon.com/American-Tourister-Luggage-Upright-Suitcase/dp/B007UNSIH2

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Is there an easy way to figure out a general time during the year when it's cheap to visit someplace? There's a friend that lives in another city and it'd be nice to plan my trips when visits are cheap, because there aren't many other constraints limiting when I would visit.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Is there a way to exclude an airline (AKA Spirit) from an ITA Matrix search? I can handle Spirit for 90 minutes MSP->ORD, but I think I might die MSP->PDX (which goes through ORD, and ORD->PDX is an overnight flight.


E: Duh, Google to the rescue. Holy poo poo this search engine is powerful. "~NK+" is the advanced code to exclude Spirit (NK being Spirit's code). The ~ negates the NK (so not NK, can be used for carriers or airports), the + means 0 or more connections. If I just searched for "~NK" it would only search direct flights. And If I wanted only non-stop flights, I could do "N:~NK" which would give me only non-stop flights not operated by Spirit.

FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Apr 21, 2014

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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France has a fair number of routes into Spain I think.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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I think Spirit is the only airline that delivers a truly miserable experience, but even then it's still safe.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Is Frontier as bad as Spirit? (420 fly Spirit everyday)

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Radiohead71 posted:

I would get a bigger car. The Spark is insanely small. I just rented one for a week when I went to Seattle and Idaho. They only have 85 hp (gutless to say the least) and have no cargo room. I doubt you could put three people and your gear in the car. My 1 large suitcase would not even fit in the rear hatch and took up the entire back seat.

I own a Chevy Spark, and it's great to haul 4 people around with nothing else, or 2 people and some luggage, but I think you'd have a hard time with 3 people plus stuff.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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If Metro access is important, check out Arlington along the Orange Line (and maybe even the Silver line too now), particularly the Highlander Motel.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Spirit is awful and I will always fly Spirit MSP-ORD. I honestly wouldn't take any trip that required a connection, only direct flights. They schedule so tightly that any delay ripples through their system, throwing everything off. I had an early evening departure from ORD to MSP, and a plane had been delayed in Florida that morning causing my flight to be many hours late as everything caught up.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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You also have to get yourself to whatever airport the package leaves from (usually NY airports but I did see one where you could choose NY or Chicago) on what I would assume is an unprotected connection.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Summer of 2016 (July and maybe into August) my wife and I will be following a friend who has some academic conferences in Europe, first in England, then in Sweden. We'll be there for 3-5 weeks (not sure on the dates yet), leaving from Minneapolis. My guess is that since Icelandair flys out of Minneapolis, connects all over Europe, and easily let's you book a roundtrip ticket where you don't depart from the same city, that it's my best choice? If I price out some random dates in 2015 (I'm guessing we can't book 2016 yet) I'm seeing 1000 round trip for Minneapolis to London (or Birmingham or Manchester) and Stockholm back to Minneapolis. I'm guessing that's going to be my best choice, and no other carrier is going to be as easy or cheap. Also the stopover in Iceland will be nice for my legs.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Anything I should know about IcelandAir?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Cicero posted:

Ok, so I want to visit Munich and Lübeck* (medium-sized city about an hour northeast of Hamburg) this summer with my wife and 3-year old son, hopefully including July 2nd and 3rd in my trip since I get those days off work automatically. I'm in the bay area, my current plan was to fly from Oakland -> Copenhagen because that's relatively cheap on Norwegian Air, and spend, say, 4 days in Copenhagen (I like biking as transport so Copenhagen is cool for that), 3 days in Lübeck, and 5 days in Munich. I'm fine taking any of the 3 bay area airports and being flexible with when I fly and to what airport.

I guess my main problem is that I'd rather not have to come back from Munich to Copenhagen for the return flight, but I can't seem to find a way to avoid it without having to pay way more (other airlines seem to be much more expensive than Norwegian).

* this probably seems like a random choice of city; my company has an office here and part of what I'm doing is checking places out because in the medium-term I may be thinking about transferring internationally

Would Icelandair be competitive for price? They allow you to easily split your arrival and departure cities in Europe. I tried to look it up but I wasn't sure which European airports they serve would work best for you. Also it looks like they don't serve the bay area directly, it'd be an Alaskan Airways connecting flight to Seattle, but maybe an option to poke around with.

E: Or JetBlue from the east coast to Bay area, depends.

FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 4, 2015

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Saw this about Spirit last night:


But so let's talk about Spirit. I've flown them a few times from MSP to Chicago because who gives a poo poo it's a 45 minute flight. I understand the base fare doesn't include much, I understand paying extra for luggage and snacks and basically everything is ala carte. I understand there's less seat pitch than other carriers and that the seats don't recline.

I also understand that it's a budget airlines, and one of the way they can save money is with a smaller fleet. This means delays ripple through the network (I've had this happen, flying back from Chicago in the evening, a plane left Miami late in the morning and it threw the whole network off). But so what are some of the other ways Spirit sucks? A lot of people seem to get mad at the baggage fees and the seats but Spirit is pretty open about that so those people are basically wrong, but I'm guessing there are other concerns that Spirit doesn't openly advertise.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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IcelandAir flys out of Seattle and makes it easy to arrive in one European city and leave from another (is Icelandair bad?)

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Looking to fly them to Europe next summer, and the biggest selling point for me is the layover halfway through the journey not 90% of the way through the journey. Also a layover point that is on the way to everywhere, so I'm not backtracking (I could fly Condor to London but I'd have to fly all the way to Germany and then back to London to do it).

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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I'd imagine it's a bit of a zoo no matter what because you've got all planes from Europe and North America landing at once, everyone scrambles from the Europe to the NA side, and all the planes take off at the same time. I hear it's a pretty dead airport outside of a few hours when everybody is laying over.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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sellouts posted:

I would not fly IcelandAir unless I was going to Iceland due to irregularities in their schedule but that's just me. Maybe their interline agreements have improved.

Not sure what this means. Are you saying that since they don't codeshare or interline with many other airlines that if you miss a flight you might be stuck in Iceland or something until the next day?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Just booked a round trip on Sun Country from MSP to DCA on the last runs of the night for them. I like to live dangerously.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Also for what it's worth, IAD to Baltimore would be a huge pain. If everything is working correctly, you'd have to take a bus from IAD to the end of the Silver Line, Silver Line to Metro Center, transfer to the Red Line, Red Line to Union Station, and then catch an Amtrak of MARC train from there.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Google maps is being really slow, but it could be faster/cheaper from BWI to take the shuttle that goes to the end of the Red Line and take that close enough to the hotel, rather than take Amtrak all the way into Union Station to go back out again.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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My wife and I flew home from our honeymoon on First Class because when you factored in all the luggage we had it wasn't all that more expensive than coach plus baggage fees. The legroom was nice I guess (we were in the first row) but what was really nice was the free booze and food, especially the mini bottles of champagne we toasted to our honeymoon with. So as long as AA offers that in first class, I say go for it. You (hopefully) only honeymoon once.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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My wife and I are planning a vacation for our 5 year anniversary at the end of this year. Leaving from MSP, flying to LGA, Amtrak from New York Penn to Montreal, then YUL to MSP. I know Newark would be easier to make the connection to Penn Station, but I want LaGuardia for dat view. I figured this would cost me an arm and a leg, but I put it into Matrix and I could get tickets with stops each way (On American) for $404, or two non-stop flights (on Delta) for $440. It was pretty much the same price for any dates leaving the last week of December and coming back the first week of January. So even though it's 10 months out that's probably not going to go down any is it? The fact that it's the same fair for pretty much any date is telling me that's their minimum fare, short of any kind of sales. And considering the weird route I'm probably not going to be able to take advantage of any sales. So, sanity check I guess?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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Our honeymoon involved taking Amtrak from Minneapolis to Portland to Seattle to Vancouver (and then back to Seattle to fly back because that was way cheaper and faster) so for our five year anniversary we're doing a similar thing but on the other side of the country.

So we know the train is not a fast way to go, we're not doing it to save time. We've already done the stop at the border, haul out your poo poo, and load it back up again, we're not taking the train for customs reasons.

Poked around some more, all 3 NYC airports are about the same price, but my wife likes to fly in the morning and LGA has the morning flights. But I would enjoy taking the train from EWR to Penn Station so that's up in the air I guess. I also looked at doing it backwards, flying into Montreal and out of NYC. It is cheaper in theory, but the non-stop flight from NYC to MSP is way more expensive.

I don't have any miles and quite frankly the whole concept makes my head spin so I'm not even going to think about that. Also if I book AA to NYC and Delta from Montreal it costs more, presumably because I'm getting charged more for 1 way tickets. AA doesn't do non-stop like you say and if I'm going to live at a hub airport then dammit I'm gonna take advantage of it.

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FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

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What are the Canadian airlines to avoid? Contemplating YUL->MSP, and the only airlines that offer that direct are Delta and Westjet. They're comparable in price according to ITA Matrix, but the Delta price is their "Basic Economy" where you may not even sit with your travelling companion. So if Westjet is fine I'd rather take that.

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