Last minute travel and an apology
The weekend before last weekend, an unexpected trip came up. The decision to travel on a Saturday morning for a 3-day weekend to Los Angeles (& Phoenix) was made at around 4:30pm on the preceding Friday. So, started looking for deals and the best deal that almost all of the usual suspects like Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity were able to come up with was a 475$ Round trip fare. If I were to book the tickets on a month's notice, I would have got the tickets or around 220$. So, I was not ready to pay 475$ for flight to a city on the West coast. That is when the site which is popular for last minute deals came to my mind.
The name of the site is Site59 (www.site59.com). The 59 in their name is bcos of the fact that people can look for tickets at the 59th minute. The site usually offers deals for only 2 weekends from the current date and they usually come up with either one of the 2 package deals - flight + hotel or flight + car. And the deal I got there was unbelievable. I got a non-stop Round trip flight to LA for 277$ and the great news was that the price included the car rental too. And wait, here is the best part - I usually search for discount coupons for any website that I buy stuff from. So, when I googled for Site59 coupons, I was able to get a coupon which took a further 25$ off from my fare. Thus, finally I ended up getting the deal for just over 250$. So, folks who plan for last minute travel, check out the site. I am sure you will get a good deal out of it.
Also visited Phoenix as part of the trip. Since my friend who came with me to LA had not seen the Canyon yet, we went for a half-a-day trip to the Grand Canyon. This is my third trip here (second in the last 4 months) and so the structure has ceased to amaze me anymore :) The only thing I was looking forward to was visiting the new skywalk that was opened couple of weeks back. But unfortunately for me, though the glass bridge was open on the 22nd, it was not open to the general public until the 28th. So, I missed out in being one of the first few visitors to the engineering marvel by a whisker.
Alaska Air is an airline that is know for their service. Since Seattle is one of their hubs, I frequently fly them and their service has always stood out. It was no different this time around too. One hour into my flight from Seattle to LA, I saw this beautiful snow clad mountain from my seat. It looked exactly like my favorite Mt. Rainier but Mt. Rainier usually comes like 15-20 mins after taking off from Seattle. Looking at me, many in the flight started looking out of the window but nobody knew what the mountain was. So, I asked the flight attendant on what the mountain was. Turned out he too was unaware of that mountain. But he did not leave it at that - he called the pilot over the phone and after getting the answer from him, announced the name of the mountain to be Mt. Shasta not just to me but over the public address system. That was some pretty cool service.
On a side note, have anyone of you noticed this when flying? During the landing of the flight, the urgency with which the flight attendants announce the arrival at the destination and other information about the destination city has always annoyed me. I mean, the flight would not have even become stable after the landing before which the flight attendants would take the mike and start reeling off her messages. Is it something they do to intentionally to distract us from the after-effects of landing?
On another side note, check this story out - iPod takes bullet. I am sure everyone of us at some point of time have ridiculed our Tamil heroes (like Ramarajan in Pongi Varum Kaveri) where they are shown as being saved from bullets bcos of some metal thing they had in their pockets. We owe an apology to those heroes & directors now that this has happened :)
The name of the site is Site59 (www.site59.com). The 59 in their name is bcos of the fact that people can look for tickets at the 59th minute. The site usually offers deals for only 2 weekends from the current date and they usually come up with either one of the 2 package deals - flight + hotel or flight + car. And the deal I got there was unbelievable. I got a non-stop Round trip flight to LA for 277$ and the great news was that the price included the car rental too. And wait, here is the best part - I usually search for discount coupons for any website that I buy stuff from. So, when I googled for Site59 coupons, I was able to get a coupon which took a further 25$ off from my fare. Thus, finally I ended up getting the deal for just over 250$. So, folks who plan for last minute travel, check out the site. I am sure you will get a good deal out of it.
Also visited Phoenix as part of the trip. Since my friend who came with me to LA had not seen the Canyon yet, we went for a half-a-day trip to the Grand Canyon. This is my third trip here (second in the last 4 months) and so the structure has ceased to amaze me anymore :) The only thing I was looking forward to was visiting the new skywalk that was opened couple of weeks back. But unfortunately for me, though the glass bridge was open on the 22nd, it was not open to the general public until the 28th. So, I missed out in being one of the first few visitors to the engineering marvel by a whisker.
Alaska Air is an airline that is know for their service. Since Seattle is one of their hubs, I frequently fly them and their service has always stood out. It was no different this time around too. One hour into my flight from Seattle to LA, I saw this beautiful snow clad mountain from my seat. It looked exactly like my favorite Mt. Rainier but Mt. Rainier usually comes like 15-20 mins after taking off from Seattle. Looking at me, many in the flight started looking out of the window but nobody knew what the mountain was. So, I asked the flight attendant on what the mountain was. Turned out he too was unaware of that mountain. But he did not leave it at that - he called the pilot over the phone and after getting the answer from him, announced the name of the mountain to be Mt. Shasta not just to me but over the public address system. That was some pretty cool service.
On a side note, have anyone of you noticed this when flying? During the landing of the flight, the urgency with which the flight attendants announce the arrival at the destination and other information about the destination city has always annoyed me. I mean, the flight would not have even become stable after the landing before which the flight attendants would take the mike and start reeling off her messages. Is it something they do to intentionally to distract us from the after-effects of landing?
On another side note, check this story out - iPod takes bullet. I am sure everyone of us at some point of time have ridiculed our Tamil heroes (like Ramarajan in Pongi Varum Kaveri) where they are shown as being saved from bullets bcos of some metal thing they had in their pockets. We owe an apology to those heroes & directors now that this has happened :)
posted by Filbert at 1:38 PM
3 Comments:
Thanks Filbert..
That was really a useful info.
Yes Karthik, please give that site a try when you are looking for any last minute tickets. Though I had heard about them before, I had never bought tickets from them.
Thank you for an excellent tips.
Radha
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