Leaving, on a prop plane

[nmg]

Dear Expedia,

No, I will not pay you an extra £10 for booking a Flybe flight from Glasgow to Stornoway, especially if you insist on passing my details to the TSA.

In fact, your flight booking software seems to be a little kooky in general. While Stornoway is relatively remote, I find it hard to believe that the quickest flight from Stornoway to Aberdeen (a possible route considered while planning my journey) involved stopping off in Inverness, Kirkwall and Lerwick en route (5.5h). Similarly, flying from Inverness to Southampton via both Manchester and Jersey seems a little excessive (7.5h).

I'll be taking the sleeper to Glasgow and flying from there.

No love,

Me

Comments

[hsb.livejournal.com]

What are you doing in Stornoway?

H

[nmg.livejournal.com]

External examining a PhD student from the University of Highlands and Islands.

[hsb.livejournal.com]

Ah well, enjoy. It was just odd, as I've just heard from A's folks. Pa has clearance to travel again, so they are off to France, probably.

Lewis can be nice, but Stornoway not so much...

H

[pir.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it thought you didn't get out enough and needed a tour of the country?

[nmg.livejournal.com]

If I'm going to collect airmiles, I'd prefer to do it on an aircraft that goes rather faster (and that stays in the air for more than 45m at a time).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

It's a valid choice, but for example on Wednesday I can find this routing on Flybe (using ITA Software's search engine):

Southampton (SOU) to Edinburgh (EDI) - Wed, Sep 21
Flybe 767 Dep: 2:35pm Arr: 4:05pm 1h 30m De Havilland Dash-8
Layover in EDI 1h 10m

Edinburgh (EDI) to Stornoway (SYY) - Wed, Sep 21
Flybe 6947 Dep: 5:15pm Arr: 6:25pm 1h 10m SAAB SF 340


which doesn't look horrible to me.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

More sensible, but the wrong end of the day; my main criterion was that I wanted to spend at most one night on Stornoway. I had been looking at those flights to get up the day before (a Thursday), but there were no flights to get me back on the same day. The Saturday flights were all over the place, which is what the wacky routes above were generated for.

And there's no way you're getting me to a) stay a Sunday on Stornoway or b) try and fly on Sunday from Stornoway.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I should also add: I was originally looking at running this trip back-to-back with a trip to Bonn for a conference. Unfortunately, the session I most want to attend is on the Sunday (the PhD exam is on the Friday), and I was having difficulty finding reasonable routes and fares for the triangular trip SOU->SYY->CGN->SOU.

I've now decided not to go to Bonn.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Expedia doesn't index all the flight options and, I've found, tends to get upset outside of the USA and main city routes.

Like with all travel sites, it's a tool not necessarily an option :)