Jet fuel

A few years ago, while living in a little yellow bungalow in western Maine, my housemate Wil introduced me to the term, and therefore to the idea of "buying jet fuel". If I remember correctly, he purchased a round trip ticket to Alaska to taste the sweet winter nectar of the PNW, and was rightly excited. He had bought jet fuel, and with that fuel he bought possibilities, adventures, and of course, travel.

What impressed me, and eventually brought about my current train of thought, is that Wil didn't see himself buying a ticket or a seat. For him, it wasn't about the adventure had while covering the distance, it was about the destination. If you want adventure while on route, you don't take a commercial air line, you road-trip, or you get a dogsled, or you walk. I imagine that most adventures had involving a commercial air carrier either involve stewardesses with loose morals OR searches for black boxes and inflatable life vests. I am interested in neither.

And so, Wil's diction and my recent purchases from Air Asia bring me to this: I am not interested in comfort, swaddling, legroom, in flight movies, and in flight meals. I don't give two damns what color the seats are, what magazines are provided, or whether I can get another pillow. Today I realized I want to arrive at my destination safely and quickly, and thats about all I want. In all truth, I'd rather not pay for all the ammenities. I'd rather take a dirty, noisy cargo plane, because it probably costs less and I wouldn't have to wait at a carousel for my baggage.

So, why don't more people like me book dirty noisy cargo planes? Why don't I? Because commercial air carriers are more convenient to book, or at least that is the assumption. Take Air Asia for example. To book my tickets, all I had to do was...

1.Go online, create an account with Air Asia, search for my flights, and enter all my information for the billing.
2.Then create a Visa Online account, with all the same information.
3.Then, after the Air Asia window closed because I took too much time setting up the account with Visa, I only had to log back into Air Asia, and create my booking again, enter my payment information again, and pay, then log into my new Visa Online account to authorize the payment, and have my credit card denied.
4. DENIED!?! There's no balance! I cleared it to work overseas! WTF?
5. Then I had to call my bank, check to make sure my card was cleared for overseas purchases (which it was) and that my line of credit was active and in good standing (which it was).
6. Then I repeated the routine with Air Asia's website, including and up to the 2nd denial of BOTH my Visa debit and credit cards. It was at this point I slammed my laptop shut and walked away.
7. Later, I called Air Asia booking in Malaysia, waited for an english speaking salesperson, and created my entire booking again, only to be denied again, and told by a nice man with a thick accent to call my bank.
8. Called the bank, who said there as no activity (read: no attempted and denied purchases from Air Asia) on my card in the recent past. They told me to call back the nice man with the thick accent.
9. Called Air Asia, waited, got a salesperson, booked a flight, card denied. "No-can-do" said the nice man with the tick accent.
10. Cried a little.
11. Called Air Asia one last time after being tipped off by a friend that Visa and Air Asia aren't best friends. Dug up an old credit account that was Mastercard, not Visa, and finally, finally, finally booked a flight. Thank God almighty in heaven above.

In the time it took me to go through these steps the price of the ticket more than doubled from 358 RMB to 780 RMB. Awesome. Super cool.

What have I learned from this debacle? Three distinct things:

- Air Asia has cheap flights, a terrible billing service, and no more than three very busy English speaking salespeople.
- Visa, its everywhere you want to be, except you can't use it with one of the largest air carriers serving south east asia, the pacific rim, and Australia/NZ. But its everywhere else, they swear.
- I want jet fuel. I do not want candy coated customer service, extra pillows, or free in-flight movies.