To keep things interesting, I’m putting the booking story for our flight from Orlando to a small city in this post. It took several twists and turns before this ticket was finally locked in, and the final solution ended up being very simple and practical. I won’t overanalyze it here—just the two dead ends I ran into: the US Airways companion certificate and canceling a BA award ticket. In the end, the winner was the low-cost carrier Allegiant.

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Flights: Orlando to a Small City

US Airways Companion Certificate (Things to Watch Out for When Using It)

My original plan was to combine this segment with ORD-MCO into a round-trip ticket, then add on a BA award ticket from ORD to the small city (4,500 points). For the ORD-MCO round trip, I wanted to use a usairways companion certificate to book it, just like the companion ticket OneMoreDay booked last time. I was actually able to find an ORD-MCO round-trip fare for 250 before taxes. That meant for two people, round trip, it would cost only 250+99+tax total, or about 200 per person on average. Add the BA 4,500-point short-haul ticket on top, and it would have been amazing. But no such luck. The fine print on the companion certificate mentioned blackout dates, meaning it can’t be used during certain holiday periods. So if you’re planning to use a companion certificate, make sure to avoid those dates. You definitely don’t want to book your hotel first and then realize you can’t book the flight. So that path was a dead end.

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Booking BA Awards MCO-DFW-Small City (How to Cancel a BA Award Ticket)

Since there were no nonstop AA flights from MCO to the small city, a connection in a major city was required. After finding no award space for MCO-ORD, I checked DFW (Dallas) instead and suddenly found AA award space from MCO-DFW. Pairing that with a BA segment from DFW to the small city looked perfect. Unfortunately, that’s where things went wrong. Because the date format on BA’s website is different from what we use in the U.S. (possibly because my browser automatically sent me to the UK site), a search for 7/11/2015 showed up on BA as November 7. In my confusion, I booked the MCO-DFW flight for November, and then also booked the DFW-to-small-city ticket.

Luckily, I checked the itinerary before going to bed and realized I had booked the wrong date, which kicked off a long journey to cancel the BA award ticket. First, BA award tickets can be canceled anytime before departure, which is much better than other airlines that charge hefty fees once you’re past the 24-hour cancellation window. I was about to use the method in this blog post to cancel the award ticket, but when I clicked cancel, it said I had to call in to cancel, which likely meant getting hit with a $75 phone service fee. So I started searching again, until I found a comment on another blog saying that if you can’t cancel on the desktop site, you can download the BA app and successfully cancel in the app! Even though it was already 4 a.m., I had to praise the app—it was a lifesaver. After clicking cancel, I immediately received an email saying the cancellation was being processed.

But the problem still wasn’t fully solved. According to the blog, BA points should be redeposited immediately after cancellation, but my points had not returned. So the next day, I decided to call BA customer service. Here’s another useful tip: call BA’s Hong Kong customer service: see this link. BA’s U.S. phone lines are often extremely busy, and you may have to wait more than 1 hour to get through. The Hong Kong line, on the other hand, answered in 10 minutes, and the staff seemed more experienced. After I got connected, the agent immediately returned the BA points to my account and also refunded the taxes and fees. If you cancel online directly, the taxes and fees apparently are not refunded, though I’m not sure why. In any case, that path also turned into a dead end.

Low-Cost Carrier Allegiant (Things to Know About Budget Airlines)

Before this, I had mostly flown major airlines and hadn’t really tried low-cost carriers like the well-known Southwest Airlines or spirit airlines. Thanks to a tip from OneMoreDay, I discovered on Google Flights that Allegiant had a nonstop flight from Orlando to the small city. The catch was that it departed from SFB, a more distant airport in the Orlando area. But the one-way fare was only $100 per person (while the AA and UA fares I found were generally around $300 per person), so I immediately started researching Allegiant.

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Here’s the key to low fares on budget airlines, and how to deal with the tradeoffs:

  • Printing a boarding pass at the airport costs $5 (you can use the APP to check in, or print your ticket within 24 hours before departure)
  • Checked bags cost extra, and carry on bags cost extra too. If you don’t add bags online in advance, adding them at the airport costs $50 per bag (each person can bring one carry on plus one backpack, but make sure to check the size limits carefully. A carry on costs $12)
  • Choosing a seat during booking costs extra, and choosing a seat at check in also costs extra (just skip it and let them assign one—you’re not going to be standing anyway)
  • There is a processing fee for credit card payments, but no fee for debit (I used Citi Premier to pay, so I earned 3X points, and it also came with travel cancellation protection—if there were delays, I could try to get compensation from Citi)
  • The seats do not recline (oh well, just deal with it—the fare is cheap for a reason)
  • All food onboard costs extra, and even water is not free (fill up your water bottle after security and buy a burger if you need to eat)

In the end, Allegiant’s seats were actually fairly roomy, and the flight attendants were pretty friendly. But before takeoff, they asked passengers to close the window shades in the cabin, saying it helped the air conditioning work better. That really is budget flying taken to the extreme!

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