Piss off airline industry! I'd rather walk...

I think most people are familiar with the concept of airplanes and their function, right? People use them to move around over vast distances, right, oft-times ending up somewhere far from home? Well, somebody needs to get on the damn horn to British Airways and fill them in, because that concept has apparently never struck them. I tried to book some tickets from London to Helsinki during a class break this August, and I found some reasonably priced direct flights on the BA website. After poring over competing airlines and schedules, I finalized my decision and made it to the payment page only to find that you have to have a British credit card to buy plane tickets. That's right: if you are in London and don't have a return ticket out of here, BA won't allow you to buy tickets out of the country. You can rot here for all they care.

To try and circumvent the system, I went to travel agencies, each of which was about $40 more expensive than the webfare. So I guess I should amend my ealier statement to read as follows: if you are in London and don't have a return ticket out of here and you are not wealthy, you can rot for all BA cares.

Well, leave it to the Good Ol' USA to come through in a pinch. Turns out it was quite a bit cheaper to buy my tickets through travelocity.com, have them mailed to my parent's house in Idaho, and then have them mail them out here to London. Hey, who says globalization hasn't brought the world closer together, eh?

Anyway, when I'm in Helsinki, surrounded by many beautiful Scandinavian blondes, I'll be sure to hoist a glass of champagne in toast to British Airways and their wonderful customer service.