last minute flight help?

June 7, 2004 3:41 PM

I have a job in azerbaijan for the summer. supposed to be pretty sweet, but my employer suddenly has left it to me to get there, with a pretty rediculous budget to do it on. anyone know of amazing last minute flight deals from the west coast to london? (like REALLY last minute and REALLy cheap?)
posted by milkman to travel & transportation around Azerbaijan (7 answers total)

try smarterliving.com, or a consolidator.
posted by amberglow at 4:49 PM on June 7, 2004

lastminute.com
They're quoting about £430.00 for washington --> london.
(this appears to be cheaper than from LAX)
posted by seanyboy at 4:59 PM on June 7, 2004

Woa.... does anybody have anything like LastMinute for the US?
posted by nathan_teske at 5:04 PM on June 7, 2004

Azerbaijan seems to be a war-town oil-rich nation. I suggest you do some careful background research on a potential employer who, at the last minute, can't manage to arrange a flight for you. We don't want to see a video of your decapitation show up on the internet several months later...
posted by Kwantsar at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2004

One piece of eurasian etiquette advice: don't mention Nagorno-Karabach and the war. I was a little clueless when travelling with my armenian girlfriend to the region in question, and it is still a very raw issue with eastern armenians, as you would expect (i arrived there not knowing that there actually was a war there and that a ceasefire is still maintained) - turning some of the most hospitable, humble and gentlest armenian people into raving lunatics (an armenian christian missionary venomously toasting "God bless everyone except those azerbaijani animals!" etc)- i fear to imagine how an azerbaijani might respond to the same subject matter. It's very, very sad in that regard.
posted by elphTeq at 8:59 PM on June 7, 2004

Azerbaijan seems to be a war-town oil-rich nation. I suggest you do some careful background research on a potential employer who, at the last minute, can't manage to arrange a flight for you. We don't want to see a video of your decapitation show up on the internet several months later...

I was in Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan) a couple years ago, and had a wonderful time. It is indeed an oil center (there's a great chapter on it in Dan Yergin's history of oil, The Prize) but that mostly means a lot of rich ex-pats. There's a mcdonald's on the main town square. Nice park by the river. Many ex-pat hangouts, and also some very cool local stuff. The old city is beautiful, and not tainted with mcdonalds; the old wall is still there all the way around it. Grave sites are up the hill, moving, a little terrible.

Anyway, point is, it's in a semi-dangerous part of the world, and you never know, etc, but in general it is not an unsafe place. Cute airport with cats sitting on the luggage turnabout thingy, as I remember...
posted by mdn at 9:29 PM on June 7, 2004

I was a little clueless when travelling with my armenian girlfriend to the region in question... (i arrived there not knowing that there actually was a war there and that a ceasefire is still maintained)

I'm sorry, I know this isn't an answer to the post, but I have to ask: how could your girlfriend not have bothered to mention that?? "I got in trouble going to Israel with my Israeli girlfriend -- I had no idea there were problems with the local Arabs, and I really put my foot in it!"
posted by languagehat at 8:08 AM on June 8, 2004