Don't Fly me to the moon

Just get me from Sydney to Colombo and back!

My usual starting point with booking air travel is Expedia Australia.  They are often where I end up as well, since I can get good deals on cars with them as well.  In this case we don't want a car as the Sri Lankans are providing that.

It seemed clear from Expedia that flights from Australia via wherever ending up in Colombo all got in around midnight and the return flights left about 90 minutes later.  (This caused some perturbation in specifying the exact dates for the rest of trip: although we won't actually get to the first accommodation until the 17th April, we need to book the accommodation starting on the 16th!)

The best deal seemed to come from Malaysian Airlines.  QANTAS flights on the way home all seemed to involve longer holdovers in Singapore and Emirates seemed determined to send us via Dubai (and thus have a 14 hour leg, a several hour holdover in a really unpleasant airport and a 5 hour flight back.

The Malaysian on-line ticketing system seemed to have a life of its own, but with perseverance I got it to accept our booking.  So did our friends - one of who is a database management professional and reckoned they needed some more resources in their system since he recognised the problem.  So we are booked!

A reader may wonder why, since we  live near Canberra, we are starting our flights in Sydney.   There are several reasons for this:

• By the time one has travelled to Canberra airport waited and for their 'systems' to process you, taken the flight and transferred to the International terminal it is very little less time than driving;
• The cost of the flights (if more than one person is in the group) is more than the cost of hiring a car.  With 4 of us my guess is that the total cost , including cabs to the airport on one hand and petrol on the other) is about $300 driving and $600 flying.
• Canberra Airport is one of the most revolting places on Earth.  I am sure that if Dante had wanted to have a place worse than being pitchforked into the fires of the Inferno he would have come up with somewhere like this.
• By not using the airport one avoids adding revenue and kudos to the owners of Canberra Airport who in my opinion really deserve a close inspection of traditional hay handling implements!

It is now only a few days to go  and I was contemplating the joys of checking in online at 10pm on the Saturday before we left to make sure we got reasonable seats.  Just on a chance I rang Malaysian to see if I could do this over the phone.  I succeeded for the outward legs and was so excited I didn't enquire about the inbound trip.  However when I passed this on to Rob, giving him our booking code he fixed up all their seats and our return ones also.  Well done that boy!  Well done that airline!  (This turns out to have been a tad optimistic since the pelican on the other end of the phone booked us 4 seats out of 5 on the leg from KL to Sydney.)