Buying airplane tickets is stressful for everyone. Or, at least it is for me and Brandon. And, it turns out that finding tickets for a sabbatical is even more stressful and time consuming, because (ironically) of the freedom and open-ended nature of it. When buying tickets for a regular vacation, you have to abide by a relatively strict time table with allowable time off work, typical daily schedules, other commitments, and such. But, when considering a whole year of free-time those boundaries go out the window. Where do you go first? What time of year is best? Where do you fly out of? Where do you fly into? Is it cheaper to stay a few days, a week, or a month? Is it cheaper to by all one way tickets? Is it feasible to buy a round-the-world ticket? Is a multi-destination ticket a good deal? These are just a few of the many variables we have had to consider.
After much deliberation about whether to go to Australia or Thailand first, we decided on Australia. It was tempting to go to Thailand first, as flying to Bangkok is a bit cheaper than flying to Australia from the United States. And, making our budget last for a full year is obviously very important for us. In the end, however, we based our decision mainly on weather. We decided that if we're spending money to go to Thailand and we want to do a lot of rock climbing and outdoor adventures, we should try to avoid the rainy season (July to October) as much as possible. Thus, we are going to Australia first and then Thailand.
Then, we looked at round-the-world, multi-city destination, and one-way tickets to determine the most affordable route. We had heard from a few people about round-the-world tickets, and they do exist! However, there are several stipulations for their use that are not conducive to the type of travel we want to do, so we have had to rule those out.
Multi-city tickets allow you to link together a variety of flights and cities into one purchase. It turns out that this method of finding tickets at good prices is a bit of a scam. We discovered it is much, much cheaper to buy multiple one-way tickets than do a multi-city ticket.
So, after all that deliberation and finally settling on a date of departure around mid-September, we set out to find our first one way ticket from Michigan to Melbourne, Australia. Yay! But, not really, because stress was not yet alleviated as ticket prices fluctuate depending on day, time, and any other unknown airline whim. During our two weeks of deliberation, ticket prices had risen about $150 per ticket fueling our frustration. Checking prices on and off for a week was nerve-wracking and finally, we just had to commit. So, we sat down one night and committed to finding and buying a ticket. After 1.5 hours of searching, we bought a ticket. After all, if you don't buy a ticket after 1.5 hours, you just have to repeat that 1.5 hours of work the next time you search, because the flights have all reset themselves. As we had just watched The Imitation Game dramatizing Alan Turing's life and the Turing Machine, I felt this flight finding phenomenon rather similar to his experience with breaking German code (though of course not nearly as weighty or world-important).
We ended up buying a good ticket overall with good layovers and flight times. Yay! But, not really, because as usual we could not shake that nasty feeling of spending more than we wanted and missing out on something even better. We had bought it thru Expedia however and had a 24 hour cancellation, full refund guarantee. We went to bed, and I went to work the next day, telling one of my coworkers that we had bought a ticket to Australia, but joking that my husband had probably returned it in the middle of the night and found us a different ticket instead.
This joke was not too far from the truth! True to his penchant for exhausting all available options Brandon had gotten up in the night and with extensive research had discovered that buying a one way ticket from Michigan to Honolulu and then buying another one way ticket from Honolulu to Melbourne, staying in Honolulu for a couple days between legs, was cheaper than our already purchased ticket. The several day layover in Honolulu also had the added benefit of allowing us to hang out with friends who live there. We were planning to do this on our way home in November, but now we could see them in both September and November. What can I say? Skillz. My husband is crazy, but amazing.
So, as you've probably guessed, we returned the Expedia ticket and bought a much cheaper ticket from Detroit to Honolulu. We will then spend a couple days in Honolulu with friends before flying from there to Melbourne. And, we finally feel really good about a plane ticket! Yay!