Paying more for the pleasure of lots of layovers

I'm contemplating tonight whether to attend the 12th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference in Portland, Oregon next week. I've attended the last three (Vancouver in 2002, Ann Arbor in 2003, and New Orleans in 2004).

This year I tried pitching it to my new employer. While the reaction was initially favorable, it turns out that the training/conference budget for the year had already been spent. So if I go it's completely on my own dime. Decisions, decisions...

In any case, I jumped online to see what air fares were looking like. If I booked a flight tonight I could still (just barely) get a seven-day advanced purchase.

I can fly non-stop on Southwest for $98 each way. On Delta I can fly non-stop for $216 round-trip.

But, if I really wanted to spend $327 instead, I could fly on Delta from Salt Lake to Kansas City (flight 4881). Then wait an hour and switch planes to fly from Kansas City to Cincinnati (flight 5833). Once in Cincinnati I could stroll the airport concourse for nearly two hours before getting on a third plane from Cincinnati to Portland (flight 1611). I'd only get out of the airport in Portland ten or eleven hours after I'd started.

So while I haven't made a final decision on going, I can definitely say that I won't be paying the extra $111 just to visit Missouri & Ohio on the way from Utah to Oregon.

(I think the programmers who built Delta's website must have been extremely commited to giving you a full nine itinerary choices come hell or high water.)

—Michael A. Cleverly
Monday, October 17, 2005 at 20:52

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