Wow, talk about instant gratification. I guess I'll settle for everything not making it back. :)

In other news, your thank you card re: engagement is sitting on my desk - I didn't leave the house the last three days, I've felt like absolute hell.

You should join the party more often - it's FT's answer to Seinfeld.

Far too much. I'd say spend has averaged near $800/month.

yeah, it is an expensive hobby.

I have minimized expenses in all other areas of my life to feed the beast. The beast will have to go on a diet once I get married. For now, however, I gotta get out and see as much of the world as possible.

The plus side is that the connection would be the return flight, so if I get hosed I wouldn't miss all that much. But I just can't conceive of any way that the 40 minute connection is going to work so I can't bring myself to pull the trigger for that change. The worst part is that the 4 hours in the airport will be my wife since I'm now booked on an earlier flight. The good news is that I can at least get her in a lounge.

Well, an extra $200 gives me a few more options, but I'm already paying way too much for these tickets. The goal was to hit that $400ish number which I actually think isn't too bad for short notice.
I've been staring at the $260 fare from EWR and wishing I had a weekend I knew I could make it work. November is completely out for me at this point. I might actually have something approaching full-time work in December so that's out. January has Belgium, February has Peru, April has Rome and May has Belize. It looks like I might have a hole in there for March that could work.....

Today is pay-day. I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an airline booking website on pay-day, especially when there are reasonable fares to destinations I've been wanting to visit. Bad Otter! Bad!

CO flights are pricey these days. I just realized I'll need 8 EQP's to hit silver. Looking at a couple of IAH-AUS or SAT runs, but they aren't as cheap as they used to. Even H class tickets are $288 now. Is Silver worth $600? If I travel, probably.

Have you checked DFW, MSY, OKC, TUL, ELP, and JAN? JAN especially can have some cheap fares, if you're willing to put up with ERJs (and going to JAN).

On CO.com I saw an EWR-PTY $236 AI this morning as per the post in MR Deals. $191++, L fare. I think I searched 3/3-3/6 +/- 3 days.

ETA: It's still there - leave 2/28 and return 3/3, 4, 5, 6 and 9th.

Also, it looks like CO has a $163 fare to SAT from CLL. If you're willing to drive up to CLL, you can connect via Houston and get four segments per roundtrip on a discount fare. $326 for Silver, instead of $600.

Great for folks in the Northeast. From down here, the ~$300ai fare from SAT is the best deal to PTY. Still, $300ai to PTY ain't too shabby.

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The PTY fare sounds nice. Sounds like I will need to pick dates and purchase when I get to IAH. I've wanted to see the canal for quite some time.

:eek:

I'm now officially scared. I added up airfare only and I'm over $4500, $4K of which is personal spend. There's also two trips I took that were reward travel, of 20K CO and 50K CO + 20K US points. Retail pricing on those trips combined were ~$3K all in.

There are 14 named trips that the spend covers, and $800 of it is accounting for the return half of my AKL trip. Backing that out it gets a little better. If I hadn't looked it up I would've guessed that it was $1K less. And that doesn't include any of the ancillary spend, bus or train travel.

I'm already in for ~$850 + 50K CO points for next year going to BRU, LIM, FCO and BZE.

Canal Mini-DO??

Why not?