Trying to book airline flights.
Fr Phil had managed to book their four legs of the airplane flights in Peru from England, I wasn’t as fortunate.
As I was booking four separate airline journeys, none of which were round trip, I kept running into trouble. I had tried multiple times to book my flights from the US on the LATAM website, trying English, trying Spanish, each time after entering all the information–city to city, flight to flight, date to date; only to have my credit card rejected for no reason anyone could figure out. Hours on the computer, hours on the phone with the LATAM representative, produced no results.
So when I arrive in Peru, I try again to book my own tickets online figuring that now I was in Peru, maybe that was the problem. Nope. This means a trip to the airline office; thank goodness it is in the same district that I’m in so it will take only about 15 minutes to get there and a one sol bus ride (about 35¢.) I explain the situation to Paola, who plugs in all four legs of my journey, only to come up with a cost that is almost 50% higher than what I had been quoted on the website! I decide not to buy the ticket that day, but go back and see what my husband John gets on his computer.
John checks his computer and gets the same price I had gotten before, sends me a photo of the computer screen and I go back to the office the next day and show Paola. The problem is that LATAM changed their pricing schedule. I”m not eligible for that price now. They have four columns, but now foreigners can buy only the most expensive tickets, not the next cheaper level down and the website was showing the wrong level for me as a foreigner. I buy the expensive tickets. No choice.
In the meantime, I warn Deborah (the unexpected visitor) by e-mail to expect a hefty cost for her airline tickets. Phil has sent her the itinerary that we will follow. She is in Andorra and contacts her husband in Spain to see what he can get. In the end, she asks me to get them as he ended up going through the same things. So back to the airline ticket office again the next day. Praise God we all have tickets on the same flights! Now to deal with the buses!
Blessings,
Susan in Peru