Travel Detective Inspires Moronic Experiment
by Leslie Strom
I am reading The Travel Detective by Peter Greenberg, when I receive a call from friends who want to meet last minute at Mac World Expo in San Francisco. I can just barely swing the 14-day advance purchase airfare (of course, it was only a few days before Mac World), and it wouldn't kill me if I missed the event, so I felt brazen enough to go to the Seattle airport and try to haggle a ticket on the spot. The jet-age equivalent of hitchhiking by the side of the road, my little experiment didn't work (for what turned out to be pretty good reasons after all), but it was an extremely funny experiment. Here's my minute-by-minute diary.
January 8, 2002 -
12:15: - pack a small day pack - change of clothes, peanut butter sandwich.
12:45 pm - take #26 bus to downtown Seattle.
1:30 pm - Not in the mood for peanut butter. Buy a different sandwich at Pioneer Square sandwich shop. Run down to bus tunnel, catch #196 to Sea-Tac airport.
1:32 pm - The #196 bus gets stuck in transit tunnel trying to go from electric to diesel. Metro driver gets out, fiddles with the electric poles, shakes his head at the futility of it all. I finish eating my sandwich.
2:00 pm - All the passengers pile into another bus for the long ride to the airport. Someone sitting next to me smells of chlorine bleach.
3:00 - I walk confidently into the airport and start at the Southwest Airlines desk which has no one in line. I ask to purchase round trip airfare to San Francisco for $120 round trip for a flight any time that day, even a red-eye. It's all I have, I tell the ticket agent, and there's a great party I'd love to go to if they can help me out. She is polite but sticks to her guns. The price is $240 each way, $480 round trip. She can't do better than that. I ask to speak to a manager who might have more latitude. There isn't one, she says, and she doesn't have the authority to override the fares. I thank her and move along to the next airline desk. I give the Southwest agent a B- for being polite but not giving me what I want. (Her employer would probably give her much higher marks.)
3:15 - There's a bit of a line at the Alaska Airlines desk so I wait for a lull. I get an agent who is in training, with another agent helping her. I make my request. "Hm. I've never gotten such a request," the novice agent says. The other more experienced agent says to me, "She's in training." "Oh, good," I say, "She can learn all about overriding the fares in the computer." They look a bit aghast at me and disappear to the back room. The supervisor comes out looking quite stern. "What can I do for you?" she asks. I would like to buy a round trip ticket on any flight today to San Francisco for $120." We can't do that. Airfare is $420 one way for last-minute flights." I persist. She gets annoyed. "Are there extenuating circumstances?" she asks. Bingo, I think. If the story is good enough, she probably does have the power to sell me a ticket at a lower rate for a worthy cause or why would she ask? "I want to see a bunch of people I haven't seen in years at a convention." Not worthy enough. She glares at me. "Grateful paying passenger or empty seat," I wheedle. Oo. The absolute wrong thing to say. "We're not a used car lot. We don't wheel and deal." Maybe you should if your airline is about to go out of business, I think. I give Alaska a D+ for trying, and then for eventual snottiness. (They would probably give me lower marks and perhaps a kick in the pants.)
3:35 - United. No one at the desk but a nice Asian woman who doesn't find me threatening, perverse, or annoying. We used to do standbys, but we don't any more, she says. It would be nice if we did. Maybe the airline industry will bring it back, but probably not. A coworker comes over and searches the computer for a fare that will come close. $440 one way. B for being nice. I'm not going anywhere by airplane today.
3:45 - A stop at an airport Starbucks kiosk to write my notes, and to call my friend Beth on her cell phone. She is at MacWorld in the din and clatter of the exhibits floor. I give her the short version of my effort, and she tells me that there was a more compelling reason I didn't get the cheap ticket I wanted - the San Francisco airport had been fogged in all day and the backlog of delayed passengers was just getting sorted out. A performance worthy of Meryl Streep wouldn't have gotten me a cheap ticket that day.
Out to the bus stop to catch a ride home. My $1.50 bus transfer is still good, the only really good travel bargain I'll see that day.
©Get Lost Magazine 1999-2010