I am the first to admit that I am a skeptic! But when I was faced with a family emergency, and needed to fly across country within 3 departure days, I knew I should be brave and take a chance. I checked into the airlines bereavement rate and there was definitely not enough of a savings there. I took a chance on Hotwire.com.
I had visited the site previously and knew that you could pick a departure date and a return date, but you do not receive any of the flight details until after you enter your payment information and hit "send"! That's a pretty scary thought, but I am not a terribly picky traveller and I was travelling by myself. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably have some pretty unpleasant departure and arrival times, and that I would probably be sitting in the middle. My main goal was to get there and back!
The website does give you some peace of mind in that you will never have any longer than a 3 hour layover, or more than several connections. I booked through Upromise and earned an extra 2% from their website, and used my Upromise credit card to pay and accumulate another 2% savings.
I was very pleased with my purchase! I flew a major airline, Delta, my flight departure and arrival times were very pleasant, and I did indeed have to sit in the middle! My layovers were no longer than 1 hour, and by trying to use reasoning when choosing my seats, I did end up being able to move over to an aisle seat on one of my flights.
I am still trying to see if I will get credit for these flights on my Skymiles account. That would be amazing!
Next adventure? I need to try Priceline.com to actually bid on the price of a flight to see what that experience will be like!
Ta ta for now...save money!
