leap.
Last night Eduardo and I bought our tickets to the DR for Christmas. It will be my first trip there since 2004, which is insane since I used to spend all my school holidays and summers there. Before we bought our tickets on American Airlines, I checked around with some other airlines, just to see if they had any better deals.
Northwest Airlines is the predominant airline out of Minneapolis airport, so I wondered what they might have to offer, especially in light of the recent merger with Delta, which has a strong presence in Latin America.
The tickets from MSP - Santo Domingo costs $7000.00. That's seven THOUSAND. For coach. And food for purchase. Even more ridiculous is the proposed route: Fly from Minneapolis to Amsterdam; Amsterdam to Paris; and Paris to Santo Domingo. w. t. f. Northwest clearly does not want to sell tickets from Minneapolis to Santo Domingo. Why don't they just say so instead of proposing inane routes?
I checked Delta and they actually had some reasonable flights with only one stop in Atlanta. We ended up buying our tickets on American. Eduardo should have enough miles for a free trip after this one.
While I generally am not a big fan of large corporate mergers, last night I decided I welcome Delta eating up Northwest. First, Delta is going to have to offer lots of cheap flights from Minneapolis to Atlanta as a gateway to Latin America and Europe to fill the gap left by Northwest's demise. Second, having an airline that has enough presence in Latin America to offer Minnesotans another choice besides American Airlines will hopefully drive prices down and not make it prohibitively expensive for Johan to spend time with his Domo family.
As a side note, Johan, Evelyn and I spent the afternoon at an Ecuadorian festival today. Choclos con queso; volibol on a cement court; sancocho and chicharron; dust all over my feet from the dirt path leading to the festival-- it was pretty much like going to Ecuador (or how I imagine it). And it was way less than $7000.00.
2 comments:
I don't really know the best place to respond to your comment, but no, that's not creepy! I feel like less of a dork since I now have TWO readers! :-)
Holy SHIT! Seven grand to take a trip to the DR via the entire world. God, that is outrageous. I agree with you - just say "no, sorry, we don't fly there".
I do like NWA cuz I can fly direct from San Jose, which is about 10 minutes from our house, to MSP. I made a serious error last fall when I came there for a board meeting. I had a brain fart and forgot to book my flight, so ended up taking another airline through Phoenix, which added a couple of hours onto my trip. I just knew our District Treasurer would have a stroke if I charged the District about $800 for the flight, just because I goofed.
NWA doesn't totally suck, but there are other options.
PS. We had a HORRIBLE experience on Delta from Atlanta to Pittsburg a couple of years ago. A woman next to me on the plane told me she was a frequent flyer on Delta and told me Delta stands for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport.
I hope your trip to the DR is safe and uneventful.
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