Great post, doconner.

Your first method is pretty much an exact duplicate of the way I do it. I find that forwarding the confirmation e-mail too often results in a garbled message. They don't need to know that I can "get a great rate on a rental car" or the other nonsense airlines include in those things.

I understand jimbo99's concern about revealing too much info about connecting flights, etc. I usually save that info for parents/spouse only. Mainly in case of a tragedy, they will know--at least to the extent of my original itinerary--whether I was or was not on the flight in question.