Use this tip to book more regional flights and you’ll be on your way to more flights! Photo by: Evan Berman
You’ve booked a trip to a foreign country. You’re excited to see everything there is to see and do everything there is to do. Then you realize there is another city in the same country that you must visit. It’s fairly far via car or train, so you start looking at flights. While you may be familiar with the large airlines that operate across several continents (i.e. Delta, British Airways, Emirates, or Qantas), you might be less familiar with smaller ones. This came up twice recently and I figured I’d share a tip for how to navigate the less-than-stellar IT of many regional airlines.
Start with Google Translate:
First, let me say that you do not need to speak the local language, especially if it is a less-common one such as Norwegian. Definitely use Google Translate when you first start searching for fares. If all goes well, you can purchase a ticket in English!
Use the Native Language:
However, all too often, this proves challenging. I recently booked flights with both Aerolíneas Argentinas and SAS. For some reason, when the websites were in English, I was unable to either select a seat or complete the purchase. After familiarising myself with the layout, I switched to the native language– Spanish and Norwegian, respectively. I searched the flights, chose the fare, and selected seats as usual.
Example– Aerolíneas Argentinas:
Aerolíneas Argentinas (AR) is a SkyTeam member based in Argentina that operates flights in much of South America. Here is what seat selection looks like for flights on AR with the website in English. Note that this itinerary has 5 total flights, though only 3 are showing up here. As you can see, while there are 3 different flights, AR only shows 2 different flight numbers. After attempting to select seats and move on, nothing happened. I tried refreshing the page, still nothing.
Switching to Spanish:
After trying unsuccessfully to select a seat, I navigated back to the Google Translate icon and changed the language back to Spanish. As you can see below, doing this shows all 5 flights with the appropriate flight numbers and seat selections.
Takeaway:
You might not often think about booking flights on foreign regional carriers. However, if you want to travel internationally, you may at some point encounter a situation where the website does not allow you to purchase a ticket or select a seat. If this happens to you, this article provides a quick fix– switch the language back from English and you should be on your way in no time!
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