Upcoming trips
So, even though the trip to India couldn’t be made as planned, Dima encouraged me to make the remainder of the trip to Poland and Russia. I didn’t have as much time for planning as I would’ve liked, but thanks to the swine flu, I could still get tickets at a relatively reasonable price—provided that I made the trip in a series of round trips, like this:
- Round trip from San Francisco (SFO) to Frankfurt (FRA)
- Leave SFO at 8:46 am, May 24, and arrive FRA at 9:55 am, May 25
- Leave FRA at 12:20 pm, June 17, and arrive SFO at 7:10 pm, June 17
- Round trip from Frankfurt (FRA) to Krakow (KRK)
- Leave FRA at 6:20 pm, May 25, and arrive KRK at 8:00 pm, May 25
- Leave KRK at 3:50 pm, June 16, and arrive FRA at 5:30 pm, June 16
- Round trip from Krakow (KRK) to St. Petersburg (LED)
- Leave KRK at 6:00 am, June 7, and arrive LED at 2:45 pm, June 7
- Leave LED at 3:45 am, June 15, and arrive KRK at 9:50 pm, June 15
Surprisingly, the most expensive segment is the last segment to and from LED, but overall, the trip cost even less than last time. I’m a bit worried about the series of round trips that are booked separately (for one, if one flight changes the rest may have to be changed as well), but hopefully it will all work out.
Update: Apparently there was one other way to schedule my trips that might have been cheaper (at least by $150 or so): use Frankfurt as my “hub”. i.e. roundtrip to FRA from SFO, then roundtrip from FRA to KRK, coming back early enough for a roundtrip from FRA to LED.
Oh well. The tickets have been booked already, and this potential saving probably isn’t worth the hassle—not to mention it would be wiped out by the time all the ticket change fees have been paid for.