Frequent Flyer Friend Part 2
Categories : Africa, Software, Travel, Uganda |
Just thought I’d update on something I posted about a while back. As you may recall I was having some trouble booking flights using my surplus of QANTAS frequent flyer points for my mission trip to Uganda in October. Initially there were no seats available at all and I was expecting to have to pay for my tickets. Then I downloaded a program called Frequent Flyer Friend which sits on my desktop and automatically checks airline websites for reward tickets on the days I want. Initially no results but a few weeks later a big smiley face appeared informing me flights were available. So I booked the tickets, happy that I wouldn’t have to pay, but still not entirely happy because the trip was cut short by several days (seats on my ideal days still weren’t available) and because I had to fly back to Perth from Johannesburg via Sydney.
Fast forward another few weeks to early June. The software still sitting there, checking daily and sending a report on it’s findings to my email. Most days the smiley face alert appears on my desktop telling me about the same flights I’ve already booked or other, even worse, ones. But then one day a whole crop of smileys appears - it seems a bunch of new reward seats have been released, and for much better days. I quickly phoned up the airline and got my flights changed, at the cost of only a small penalty of 2,500 points but I was happy enough with that. So now I’m leaving on the day I had originally planned (October 10) and returning on October 29th - which means I will be there for the whole duration of the medical team mission instead of missing a few days. I’m still returning to Perth via Sydney, but I can live with that.
Since then I haven’t bothered to load Frequent Flyer friend, but I just happened to click on the icon today, and guess what? All the good flights are gone. There’s now no flights at all to South Africa and only a couple back (via Sydney) several days after I want to return. So thanks to Frequent Flyer Friend I was lucky enough to find the small window when those seats were available and book my tickets. A very handy piece of software indeed 
