Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

holiday travel

Still a month and a half out, it already looks like I’ve waited too long to buy my plane ticket home to Tucson for Christmas. A search on American Airlines reveals that my “usual” route home is going to cost me $591. I can save $20 by flying home through Chicago instead of Dallas, but that was a disaster last time. And even opening up my search to include flying out of Baltimore (which I hatehatehate), the prices still don’t dip below $405 — and that’s for the really crappy, inconvenient flights, flying out of the crappy, inconvenient airport, which means tacking on another $7-50 each way (depending on luck and mode of transport) to get to and from the airport.

I hate that airline ticket prices are such a game, anyway. Sometimes I wish that there was a standard fare for each route. Sure, there wouldn’t be the chance of scoring hugely discounted seats, but at least it would lend some stability to the process. I’d much rather know ahead of time that my ticket will cost X amount and be able to budget accordingly, not have the cost of my trip subject to the whims of supply, demand and airline arcana.