What was the craziest route you've put up with for a cheap ticket?

My next trip- depart April 21:

SHV-ATL

ATL-JFK

JFK-NCE

Dulles to Shanghai...EASTbound!

Well, it wasn't for a cheap ticket, but because there was terrible fog in Florence and a train strike throughout Italy. Instead of Florence to Rome and Rome to Dulles, we took a bus to Pisa, flew Pisa to Rome, Rome to London, London to New York, and New York to Dulles. It was close to 40 hours in transit. I got out of that last plane looking like a rag doll.

We were going to do
CGN-LHR-ORD-SEA-YVR
last month.

But luckily, a schedule change made the original itinerary impossible, and instead we got FRA-SFO-YVR, which is still the long way around, but much better.

On the way over we did do
SEA-ORD-LHR-CGN
though.

In 1980, I flew roundtrip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. My travel agent said that the airline had a crazy deal that if I flew back home Philadelphia to San Diego to Los Angeles, I would be awarded either one free, first class ticket to Europe or two free coach fare tickets to Hawaii.

Unfortunately, I was poor and couldn't get enough time to take off at the point in my life to go to Europe, but I did enjoy five nights and a hell of a lot of mai tais in Waikiki.

Was not for a cheap flight... but for delays:

LAX - DFW -
DFW - Santigo Chile
Chile - Paris

Not a chep ticket but this was in the 60s when you bought one ticket to the farthest point and could have multiple stops and stays within the start and end point.

1. Drove Worcester,MA to Providence.

2. Flew Providence to JFK

3. JFK to Prestwick

4.Off at Prestwick to make sure wife was there, she had flown over a week earlier with children. Got back on the same SAS plane.

5.Prestwick to Bergen for two days

6.Bergen to Oslo for one day

7.Oslo to Copenhagen for 3 days

8.Copenhagen to London for 4 days. Did some business in London with Jaeger.

9.London to Prestwick, stayed for two nights on the Clyde with wife's relatives.

10.Wife flew home with children

11. Stayed overnight in Glasgow

12. Train from Glasgow to Darlington for business and continued same day to Manchester then small town in Lancashire to visit relatives for 5 days

13. Train to Manchester, bus to airport.

14. Same day, Manchester to Prestwick to JFK.

15. Flight from JFK to Providence, cancelled for weather, so limo from JFK to Providence and drove home to Worcester.

An addenda to the itinerary. Only flight/lodging/train reservations were flights from Providence to Bergen going and Manchester to Providence returning.

To get a special fare, I booked:

ATL-LAX
LAX-Auckland
Auckland-Sydney

But because of bad weather and fog in Auckland, the trip became:

ATL-LAX
LAX-Christchurch
Christchurch-Auckland
Auckland-Sydney

I can't remember the total time of the trip, but when I landed in Sydney, I felt like I had been on a plane for a week.

When we landed in Christchurch, we were forced to sit on the plane for several hours and weren't allowed to get off, even just to get a drink at the terminal. (The small airport was overwhelmed with all the diverted flights from Auckland.)

The people who lived in Christchurch were the most upset, because they were forced to sit there for hours, then fly back to Auckland, only to get a connecting flight back to Christchurch. Good times!

On a FF ticket, we flew:

St. Louis - Minneapolis - Memphis - Detroit - Amsterdam - London Gatwick

This was with Northwest, and we flew on practically all its US hubs!!

When I was a kid, my parents flew us CAE-ATL-JFK(overnight)-ANC(fuel stop)-ICN-TPE because it was the cheapest ticket. None of us would ever consider doing that anymore!

During my days of using staff travel with Qantas we went from Sydney to Tahiti, to LAX to Dallas to Gatwick. it took over 40 hours!!! love that staff travel, after that episode we decided to pay for a ticket that meant at least we had our bums on a seat.

schnauzer

This is nothing. Check out the mileage run forum at Flyertalk for the real crazies. Taking convoluted routings is a great way to build up your mileage balance and to gain elite status on the cheap.

Indeed, I have seen folks on Flyertalk who have bagged top-tier elite status by the end of January, taking advantage of cheap fares and basically just flying/turning around/flying/turning around/...

Greensboro-Atlanta-Paris-Milan-Athens

Few years ago AA was offering a really cheap LAX-LHR fare, a total of ~$225 R/T. Flight feom TPA-LAX was also cheap, about $160 R/T. It was about $100 more to fly TPA-DFW/MIA/ORD-LHR so I decided to go the long way. All those miles:

TPA-ORD-LAX-LHR-LAX-MIA-TPA

http://tinyurl.com/29urut


Couple of years later AA had another special to BKK but you had to go through HNL, so:

TPA-ORD-HNL-NRT-BKK-NRT-HNL-ORD-TPA

http://tinyurl.com/26ptmb


At the moment I'm on the way to Kabul. I just made it to Dubai and here is how:

TPA-ORD(all day layover, my choice)-LHR(all day layover, my choice)-DXB(1 night stopover)-KBL

2 nights on the planes, AA buisness and BA first (opup from business)

http://tinyurl.com/2znqz8


Reporting from the Dubai Hilton.

Back in the early sixties I flew in one day:

Shuttle BOS-LGA
LGA-ORD
ORD-DEN
DEN-Colorado Springs

A long day.

If you really want to see convolution I second a visit to Flyertalk.com and go to the mileage run thread. Amazing!

O'Hare to Dulles to Vienna to Venice in October 2003 for less than $400 RT.

The last leg was on Tyrolean Air's tiniest plane, but they still served beverages twice and a delicious sandwich.