Spoke with Jeff Friday night to discuss coordination of travel plans and pledged to try and purchase my tickets so he had something to work around. Ultra-marathons aside, Reunion still requires a significant commitment in time and money, and he is on the bubble for being able to join the expedition. Like me, Jeff would be forfeiting a large chunk of vacation time with family, but he is an avid hiker and the volcanic trails of Reunion carry considerable allure.
Scoring tickets proved arduous. Preliminary plan was to fly USAir to Paris and then Air Austral to Reunion, for several reasons. Foremost was that I fly USAir most often and have collected a few frequent flier miles over time. When I plugged the round trip into their web site it appeared I only had enough miles to gain a free ride one way, but the return flight could be purchased for $600. USAir drops you off at Charles De Gaulle in Paris, which led to selecting Air Austral for the second half. The only other serious contender was Air France, who only departs from Orly (another Paris airport, which has direct transportation with De Gaulle, but that’s clearly another wrinkle and Air Austral was a few dollars cheaper).
Since the biggest investment would be with Air Austral, I decided to buy that round trip first, which was accomplished with no problems except for one. My wife’s passport and mine were both about to expire and Kim recently scored a great opportunity to go to Italy this summer. So we headed to the local post office several weeks ago and applied for renewals. Kim indicated travel dates on her application but I didn’t bother as Reunion was months away and they told us typical turnaround was six to eight weeks.
Kim received her new document last week but nada for yours truly. I maintain the lag was driven by her indication of some urgency…Kim says it’s due to all of the Arabic stamps on my old passport. Whatever the cause for delay, I was prompted for a passport number when purchasing my Air Austral tickets and had none since I had to surrender it to get the renewal. Fortunately I keep a photocopy of my passport in my wallet in case it gets lost when traveling, so I still knew the number, but that begged the question of whether a new one gets assigned at renewal. We compared Kim's old and new passports to learn that you do get a brand new number. I didn’t want to delay purchasing plane fare and Kim suggested I proceed with the old number, pointing out I could just bring both passports along to verify the discrepancy.
One ticket down, one to go, but things fell apart on the USAir side when I approached the round trip as a pair of one-way ventures (so I could purchase one with miles and the other with cash). I thought the notion of round trip pricing had gone to the wayside several years ago, but criminy! Round trip air fare between my home and Paris was $1,155, but buying the segments on a one-way basis totaled $5,500!!! Worse yet, whenever I tried entering the frequent flier acquisition as a one-way it bounced away from mileage redemption to cash. A call to USAir confirmed the bad news: you can only purchase round trips with frequent flier miles, and yes, there is a sizable discount for round trip purchases. Sizable? Believe I would label the quantum leap from $1,155 to $5,500 gargantuan rather than sizable.
Back at the drawing board, the begrudging solution was to purchase additional frequent flier miles and redeem for the entire round trip. Of course the insult to injury was getting hit with another $150 in “taxes” for my “free” ticket! Not a pleasant experience and a painful learning curve, but Reunion here I come.
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