Flying right now is a nightmare for casual travelers and experienced road warriors alike. Here’s the harrowing journey I planned for a trip to Armenia.
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In addition to being an award-winning travel writer (not really), I am also a partner in a couple of businesses. As an owner, I watch expenses far more closely than I did when working for someone else’s business. It’s not right, but it’s true. As such, I am more careful with my company funds and find that some expenses are just intolerable but necessary.
I had a business trip to Yerevan, Armenia that I needed to fulfill within a very specific date range due to upcoming commitments. However, for anyone that’s flown recently, the costs are laughable, especially for the class of service.
Ideally, I was searching for a reasonable coach ticket that I could upgrade using instruments or miles. However, coach rates from Pittsburgh any time during the week I needed topped $3,000 and none of them included a business class/first class segment, not even domestically. In fact, the best rate I could find from any nearby city (New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia) didn’t dip below $2,000 no matter when I flew on any carrier from any of those airports. Due to the length of the journey, business class was a must so I was stuck looking for space and patching together a ticket.
After searching nearly 100 different permutations from the aforementioned airports to any place with direct flights into Yerevan that doubled as major hubs (Paris, Warsaw, Athens, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Dubai), I found a unicorn.
United Airlines not only had a reasonable flight to Paris from Washington Dulles for the date I wanted but it also had confirmable upgrade space even from the cheapest economy fare using Plus Points that I had not been able to use heretofore. However, it was only one leg and just to Paris. That didn’t get me to Dulles nor from Paris onward.
Searching for onward flights, Google pointed me in the direction of an absolute bargain for the journey at more than $800 roundtrip in coach making that short segment unbearably long. Air France wanted $1600 for the non-stop in coach on an A320. I also worked on getting using SkyTeam miles to complete the segment but no award seats were available short of 171,000 Air France miles. Oneworld has almost no routes into the city (just Qatar flies from Doha following the suspension of S7.)
I headed back to United.bomb where I found one-way economy space for 17,000 miles or 28,500 in business. I attempted to complete the booking for economy but couldn’t get it to ticket so I snagged business class on the advice of the unimitable Matthew Klint, Award Expert.
On the way home, for my week of travel (lots of flexibility given) there was not a reasonable coach seat (upgradeable nor tough-it-out) and no business class seats on offer from the city. Getting back to Paris for a return left me with no such magic as I found on the outbound.
American Airlines website showed phantom space through Royal Air Maroc but wasn’t bookable online nor even on the phone. The rep could recreate and display the availability but not ticket the flights. Not from Yerevan, not from Dubai, not even from Paris.
This is how busy and bad travel is right now. For two weeks there’s not a single bookable award seat on any alliance from Yerevan.
I am hoping this changes, but for now, it appears that I’ll be traveling to nearby Tbilisi, Georgia to ultimately fly an incredibly painful route home. Here’s my journey:
Outbound
- Pittsburgh-Washington Dulles
- Four hour drive
- Washington Dulles-Paris
- 8 hour flight
- 13 hour layover
- Paris-Vienna
- 2.5 hour flight
- 25 minute connection!
- Vienna-Yerevan
- 2.5 hour flight
- 3:55 AM arrival
Return
- Yerevan-Tbilisi
- 5 hour bus ride
- Tbilisi- Warsaw
- (6 AM departure)
- 2.5 hour flight
- 12 hour layover
- Warsaw-Brussels
- 2.5 hour flight
- 12 hour layover
- Brussels-Washington Dulles
- 8 hour flight
- Drive back to Pittsburgh
- Four hour drive
The journey from Pittsburgh to Armenia is always a long affair, even with the tightest of connections. Flights into Yerevan from Europe are almost exclusively at night arriving in the very early morning due to a short distance but several time zone changes. For example, departing Paris for Yerevan with just a 25-minute connection in Vienna (fun) departs just after 8 PM but doesn’t arrive until 4 AM though the distance is just about 4.5 hours of flying time.
The rest of the journey presents some interesting new challenges. I hope to be able to adjust my return with space opening up closer to my departure, but as it sits now, I will just have to make this work.
All told I spent about $800, 80 Plus Points, 97,000 miles for a business class roundtrip which feels like a bargain, but I will be earning those savings.
I’ve never seen it this hard to book a trip, not on short notice, not in the heights of summer – never before in my life. That said, I was still able to get this trip to something I can live with for a price I can live with and a travel… adventure – no – experience that will be interesting at the least.
https://liveandletsfly.com/planning-a-nightmare-trip-to-armenia/