air fares

[cellio]

When I flew to Boston in early November, I think my round-trip ticket was $120 (not on a discount airline). I'm looking at options for my trip in July and the cheapest tickets are more than twice that, with the non-sucky ones being over $300. What happened? Is that all just summer effect? Oof. (Yeah, fuel prices -- but they aren't that much lower last fall...) JetBlue, by the way, is not competing all that favorably with old-school players like United. I'm using kayak.com to find fares.

Direct flights are even more expensive. Does anyone know the most expedient way to find out which connecting airports have free wireless? So far I've seen JFK, DCA, LaGuardia, and Cincinnati among the options.

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

AFAIK, JFK and LGA don't have free wireless, at least not in any of the terminals I'm ever in.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

DCA and LGA do not have free wireless. You can buy a day pass that runs around $7 to $10. I do not know about Cincinatti or JFK. I booked a trip last week for July 16 - 18th and it ran around $180 (combination JetBlue / USAirways) - this was for work. When in July is your trip - if we overlap, would you be interested in meeting for dinner one evening (Mon or Tue)?

[cellio]

My trip's July 15-22. I don't know what the schedule is yet while I'm there, but if it works out I'd enjoy getting together despite the irony of two Pittsburghers going to Boston to have dinner. :-)

It appears that weekday trips are cheaper than ones involving Sundays. I hadn't realized that, but after I saw your comment I explored some of the rates. The old rule about the importance of a Saturday stay doesn't even hold any more; your trip is cheaper than mine.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

DCA doesn't have wireless, and I wouldn't want to connect there anyway. I've never been in there when it hasn't been JAM PACKED FULL of people.

The only New England airport I've been in recently is MHT, and they have wireless (but I think you could drive from MHT to Boston).

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Drive from MHT to BOS? Very easily. It's about 50 miles, all interstate highway. I was assuming that cellio didn't want to rent a car, though, since that would eat up all the savings from flying Southwest from PIT to MHT. One can get a shuttle bus from MHT to the Boston area, but not very close to her destination.

But I do love MHT. They have the nicest TSA agents in the country.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

MHT is very nice (I used to travel through there a lot until the direct PIT->BOS flights became cheap). I agree with you about the TSA folks.

Using Southwest, IIRC, involves a connection in PHL or BWI, I don't know about wireless in either of those airports.

[cellio]

Thanks for the MHT tip. As it turns out, the difference in prices isn't enough to make up for the distance (I wouldn't otherwise be renting a car), but it's a good option to know about for other trips.

(Thanks also for the advice about layover time and airport size. That's a good point.)

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I don't recall any of the airports I've used (DC/National or Dulles, BWI Marshall, Boston/Logan, Atlanta/Hartsfield mostly) having free wireless.

[cellio]

I got 15 minutes of free wireless at Logan last year. If I'd known it would cut out after 15 minutes, I would have spent that time differently. :-) (Hmm, I wonder if I was getting legitimate service, or if someone was trying to trap passwords or credit-card numbers with a rogue network and got bored when I didn't provide any.)

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

How does such a thing work? I suppose I'll have to be on guard against something new whilst out roaming with my laptop (I am new to the wireless experience.)

[cellio]

You sit down at a {coffeeshop, airport, bookstore, etc}, pull out your laptop, and see a connection named something like "Starbucks wireless" or "Logan" or whatever. Maybe it's the real thing, or maybe someone has set up a computer and an AirPort (or whatever) with an open wireless connection 50 feet away. (He's probably mooching off the real one, inserting himself between you and that.) Anything you type that's not encrypted, he can sniff.

I don't know how to set it up, but I know it's possible. The attack really relies on the fact that most people don't question a network connection in a place where they expect to find one.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

How do I defend against it, aside from not using wireless in such places? I don't need to use it, but the convenience can be nice.

[cellio]

I'm not sure, unfortunately. :-( When I use public wireless, I use ssh to connect to my shell account (so the password is encrypted) and I don't type passwords or credit-card numbers into my web browser. I don't have a lot of wireless experience, though -- only got a laptop last year.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

At least in Windows, if you bring up the list of available wireless networks each "network" will have an icon associated with it. If it says "Computer to Computer" (picture of two computers), it is probably someone sitting with a computer.

At BOS (Logan), the legitimate network specifically pops up a message warning about "Free Wireless" networks when you connect to their website.

[cellio]

Thanks for the information. I wonder what the Mac equivalent is. I wonder if anyone who knows is still reading comments. :-) (My laptop is actually a Mac, but that's my only exposure to the OS and I don't know a lot about it yet.)

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

When you log on to a wireless network, you should get an indication of whether or not it is secured. If it isn't, you don't want to send any important private information.

The catch is that a secured network either means that you have to obtain (and probably pay for) a password.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and consider the length of the layover vs the size of the airport... 45 minutes in Phoenix is JUST enough time for me to grab food to carry onto the plane and run across 2 terminals to board my next plane. PHX has wireless, but (unless we get delayed) I never get a chance to use it.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Also consider farecast.com and farecompare.com...

Personally, I put about a 50 dollar premium on direct flights, and about a $20 premium on going in and out of Logan. If it goes past about $75 round trip, I start making changes...

[cellio]

Thanks -- I didn't know about either of those sites.