How Much Time Do We Waste Booking Airline Tickets?

Living on an island, we basically have to fly to get anywhere. I seem to spend half my life booking flights for us, or for family and friends visiting us, and I hate the whole process with a passion.

This week has been a classic example. I needed to get my daughter, son in law and grand daughter back to UK. It's the busy time of year, when everyone has to get kids back to school, so the airlines ramp their prices up. A flight that normally costs in the region of €100 to €150 suddenly becomes €600! I was able to find seats on many of the flights departing from here, but I simply wasn't going to pay €1800 for the privilege.

It became a mission. I looked at it from every angle, on every website, and it took up most of a day. In the end I was able to route them from here to Tenerife, from there to Madrid and from Madrid home to London, for under €1000. How ridiculous is that? Three flights for around half the price of one! And you know what? I know direct flights left here yesterday with empty seats. Because people like me simply wouldn't pay that price.

A Message for the Airlines

For goodness sake someone, please, give me a fixed price!

I'm honestly not looking for the cheapest deal and I'm not bothered about air miles - I have thousands and never seem to be able to "spend" them. Just give me a fixed, reasonable price, irrespective of the time of year, which includes a case and all taxes and allows you to make a reasonable profit, and I promise you, I won't even look at your competitors.

€125 each way would be fine, even €150 would be acceptable. If you did that, I'd be very happy to book everything with you, and not waste my time looking at all the other options. It would mean I could budget a year ahead, and you could fill your aircraft months ahead of departure instead of desperately flogging seats a few days ahead of time.

It has to make sense.

Does anyone else suffer from this?

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