Multi-City Thanksgiving Airfare Rigamarole

I’ve been keeping an eye on flights from State College to Spokane for a few weeks now, because I’m going to be in my former roommate Tim’s wedding in Yakima on 21 Nov, and visiting the “Lee clan in Spokane” for a couple days before and after the wedding. It’ll be my first trip to Washington state ever, and I’m really looking forward to it. And on the way back from Spokane, I figured I may as well have a few-day stopover in Minnesota/Wisconsin for Thanksgiving with my family, since I’d be flying through MSP anyway. At any rate, in the last couple weeks while I’ve been waiting for some details to work themselves out, prices for the flights I was looking at went up $300-400. For a multi-city itinerary (SCE->GEG, GEG->MSP, MSP->SCE), the cost this morning was a staggering $900.
Ouch.
However, for travel on the exact same dates, if you replace SCE in the itinerary above with DTW, the price magically drops to $520. Still not cheap, but it’s around Thanksgiving, and that’s a pretty substantial savings over flying out of State College. Factor in that I can drive the 6+ hours to Ann Arbor and stay with Alex the night before I fly out of Detroit (AA is really close to the Detroit airport), and park my car for free there, it really was a no-brainer. Even with the cost of gas and tolls to drive from State College to Ann Arbor and back, I’ll still save $300 by flying out of Detroit. Heck, if my digital camera keeps acting up, I might buy myself a new one with that cost savings! (When I fly from MSP->DTW, I’ll be able to hitch a ride with Alex from his house to the airport, as his flight also leaves around that same time… but he’s flying MSP->ORD, then taking the train to Ann Arbor, instead of flying MSP->DTW, because it’s way cheaper, oddly enough… so I’ll get a shuttle from DTW to Ann Arbor, go get my car, and then drive back to State College that night, probably departing Ann Arbor before Alex even gets to Ann Arbor, despite his flight leaving MSP a half hour before mine. How’s that for travel twists!)
However, I really could’ve done without the added hassle of trying to arrange the plane tickets through my credit card. First, the rewards center phone number wasn’t published prominently anywhere, so I had to call general customer service to find it out. Then they said there was a $15 service fee for booking over the phone, but free over the website (at least they gave the URL in the automated message!). Then I tried the website, but it said there were no flights available those days. B.S.! So I called back, listened to some program details hoping that’d explain things, but it didn’t, and I couldn’t figure out how to back up a few levels of menus, so I hung up and called again. This time I talked to someone, and she said in order to book a multi-city itinerary I *had* to do it over the phone. I sensed B.S. there too (and was ultimately right), because the website allows you to do multi-city searches. She tried to plug in my same dates, and also came up empty, but found that if I picked a “major” airport to depart from, that it’d work. Apparently I can redeem my points for flights, unless they depart from State College. ARGH. I asked for a list of airports from which I could redeem my points (or a list of ones from which I can’t), but she said she didn’t think any such list was published anywhere. B.S.! Argh! So then I started searching their website again, this time using other departure cities like Pittsburgh. Then I thought of checking the cost of flying out of Detroit, since Alex lives so close to there. With it being so much cheaper, that immediately became my new favorite plan. But to book it through my credit card, the specific flight times were unfavorable (and it pretty much locked me in to a couple choices, even though the airlines themselves had many different flight options/times on the same days for the same price), and it would’ve used up all my points (nearly enough for two $400 flights or two $250 cash back rewards, in theory), plus charged me an additional $75 cash. It seemed that either the credit card travel agency was charging around $800 for a flight I could book myself on nwa.com for $520, or every 25,000 reward points was only good for a $250 airfare, instead of a $400 airfare. If the former, it would be far cheaper for me to get cash for my reward points and book the flights myself. If the latter, it’d be far less hassle for me to get cash for my reward points and book the flights myself, instead of being limited by the options from the credit card travel agency. Either way, I finally decided to book the flights myself over nwa.com and get straight cash for my credit card reward points.
Getting all this sorted out seriously took all morning for me. So while I’m glad that I finally have my flights booked to go to Washington and to go home for Thanksgiving and to get back to PSU afterward, I really wish this wouldn’t have taken up my *entire* morning. But my November trip criss-crossing the country will all be worth it, it’s gonna be fantastic!