Comments on: last minute flight help?

Question: last minute flight help?

milkman — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 15:41:31 -0800

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?)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 16:49:11 -0800

try smarterliving.com, or a consolidator.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 16:59:46 -0800

lastminute.com
They're quoting about £430.00 for washington --> london.
(this appears to be cheaper than from LAX)

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:04:16 -0800

Woa.... does anybody have anything like LastMinute for the US?

By: Kwantsar

Kwantsar — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:18:18 -0800

By: elphTeq

elphTeq — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 20:59:24 -0800

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.

By: mdn

mdn — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 21:29:28 -0800

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...

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 08:08:30 -0800

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!"