This has been my experience over the last couple months:

Twitter
Alaska Air and Delta Air both have Twitter accounts. I also use Travelocity fairly regularly, and they have a Twitter account as well. What a great way to keep up on the latest deals right?
Result?
Thanks to Alaska Air’s Twitter feed, I’ve learned a lot about the famous Olympic speed skater from Seattle. I’ve learned it’s Delta Airlines’ 80th anniversary of non-stop flight. I’ve watched a few people resolve some complaints, and I’ve even seen a few promotions for flights to Hawaii and stuff. But so far I have not seen any sort of financial incentives or flight deals that impact me directly. Mostly just a lot of chatter and clever quips.

RSS
Travelocity offers the ability to create customized RSS feeds that will only trigger when the cities and price point match my specific criteria. I wish Twitter did the same thing frankly. It’s something Dave Winer has been suggesting for awhile.
Result?
I set up my maximum amount of RSS notifications. But so far, I have not received ANY RSS notifications that matched any of my criteria. I only specified a slightly lower price point, but I have yet to be notified.

Newsletters:
I have subscribed to Orbitz, Kayak, and a couple other newsletters alerts. As I’ve asked different people about sites they use to get good deals I get recommendations of different travel sites, so I sign up in the hopes I can keep an eye out for more fare deals.
Result?
So far no good.

Admittedly, there are probably a couple things that make finding fare deals difficult for me.

• My home airport is a regional airport
  Asheville has a small regional airport. It kind of reminds me of the San Jose Airport. Well, San Jose circa 2003, since that is the last time I went through San Jose. Maybe it’s bigger now. So there aren’t a lot of people clamoring for an Asheville to Seattle flight, thus the scarcity of deals. My flights usually involve a shuttle plane from Asheville to Charlotte, or Atlanta, or some mid-west city like Chicago. Thus the added cost.
• TTL
  I have only been buying tickets a few weeks before my flight dates. As my work schedule solidifies and I can buy tickets months in advance, I think I’ll see a lot more flexibility in price.

Regardless, each flight is about 4500 miles each way. So my Frequent Flier miles are racking up. I’ll save my Frequent Flier Miles experiences for another post.

I’ve looked around online for more tips and tricks on finding flight deals. Usually I end up being pushed to a HubPages or Squidoo lens, or some lame Top 5 Airfare Tips blog post, which just end up trying to get me to click on an ad or affiliate link. Boo.

Does anyone have any tips on finding online deals? What has worked best for you?

Read on for pictures

]]> http://www.makoviney.com/2008/02/27/mike-and-kelseys-wedding-photos/feed/ 2 http://www.makoviney.com/2007/06/29/family-road-trip-june-2007/ http://www.makoviney.com/2007/06/29/family-road-trip-june-2007/#comments Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:56:16 +0000 Don http://www.makoviney.com/2007/06/29/family-road-trip-june-2007/

We left last Sunday for a trip to visit grandparents (the kids’ great grandparents) in New Jersey, as well as their Aunt Leah and some other friends in Salisbury, MD.

After a stop in Johnson City TN (Cracker Barrel for breakfast of course), we pretty much drove straight through to NJ and stayed at a hotel in Toms River. Girls did well, Abby was getting a little restless by the end.

The next morning we went to Grandma Dee and Grandpa Chick’s for breakfast. After they gave their gret grandkids some gifts, we took a ride over to Amanda’s Aunt Kelly’s, where the girls played in the pool with their cousins.

The princess on her throne.

The next day the girls and I went to the beach. Much fun.

Mmmmm … work those hips.

Of course after all the natural beach stuff we just had to make a stop by the boardwalk, where I got the funnel cake I had been so looking forward to – and ride the ferris wheel.

Heaven on a paper plate.

We went out to dinner with Amanda’s grandparents that night and then sat around the pool back at the hotel with them for an hour or so. Much fun.

The next day we packed up and hit the road for Leah’s house in Maryland. We ended up driving onto the Cape May ferry which was pretty cool.

It was nice seeing Leah and meeting her friends. But Tate was getting pretty worn out with her current back problems – none of the medicines were helping. She had a couple of really bad nights and with me and Amanda without sleep, so it was time to head home early. Tate’s scheduled for another MRI in addition to an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in Durham later next week.

Hopefully they will have good news for us – or at least a path to get her on the road to recovery soon!

Lots of fun in New Jersey.

How could I not go to an Eastern Shore boardwalk and not get a funnel cake? It just doesn’t make sense!

I have some clients I have to meet on business for some very large projects starting in July, so they are flying me down for a kickoff meeting.

I’ll be holed up like Dick Cheney in “an undisclosed safe location”.

I’ll have a day or two free (probably only one day really) so feel free to give me a call at 828-348-4155 if you’d like to get together for a beer, coffee, meal, etc.

You can see the video in context of the trip by going to the Road Trip Page.