I love Rick and his books. I also don’t fully agree with his flying philosophy. Most of his books consistently suggest using a travel agent for booking flights because he’s catering to that most common denominator of travelers who might rarely fly an international flight. His focus is with the destination and not the journey to the destination. Details of the journey aren’t interesting for him.

my wife & I use a lot of his info for trips while also using a lot of info from FlyerTalk. While we obviously don’t use a travel agent, I heard in his audiobook that the writer david sedaris uses a travel agent for all of his travel so that IRROPS won’t worry him.