Replied: Mon, 31 Oct 88 22:33:13 EST
Replied: Jennifer.Kay@IUS2.CS.CMU.EDU
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 88 15:16:41 EST
From: Jennifer.Kay@IUS2.CS.CMU.EDU
To: bovik@CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Cheap international travel for students


Hi Dr. Bovik, I was just talking with someone and the subject of a 
particular student travel agency came up that I thought you and your 
pals might be interested in.

There is a certain travel agency in New York that I have used for a 
couple of flights to London. They are cheap, they are only for students
(you must have an international student ID to order any tickets, but 
you can get the ID through them with the appropriate letters from CMU),
and they are occasionally a pain to deal with (see below), but overall,
I haven't had any problems with them and you may want to check them out.

The place:
	Council Travel    phone: (212) 661 - 1450
	I believe the address is:

		205 E. 42nd St., 
		NY, NY 10017


Good points: 
	In my experience they have had incredibly cheap tickets to 
London, from NY or Newark, NJ (I'm not sure about connections to Pgh
or wherever). Often they fly you on "real" airlines (eg. I flew on
Pan Am both times, they now use Virgin Atlantic to London) but I think
they also may do some charter stuff. I'm fairly sure that they do tickets
to any places that people travel that's outside North America.

	Once I've ordered and paid for my tickets, I haven't had any 
trouble getting them from them (i.e. they just send them out to you
no problem).

	Their tickets are sometimes free of the length of stay restrictions
on regular tickets (eg. many tickets have a maximum stay of 21 days,
many of theirs do not.)

Bad points:

	They are pretty tough to get hold of. They have lousy hours
(approx 9:30-5 Mon-Fri), the line is often busy (call from a phone with
a redial button or you'll drive yourself crazy) and when you do finally
get a line through to them, they put you on hold for ages (I've been on
hold for 15 minutes, and that's at peak rate (no 800 numbers)). So you
have to figure the cost of phone calls into all of this. I suppose 
you could try to  make reservations by mail, but I've never tried it
and it doesn't seem too practical.

	Usually when you buy a ticket from them it comes with a zillion
non-refundable, non-changable clauses attached. So you have to know what 
you want before you pay for your reservation. Also, they want you to pay
for your ticket pretty soon after you reserve it.

	You have to book far in advance because they only have a limited
number of seats, etc. available for any particular time. Call early!


If you're interested, give them a call and judge for yourself, I've been
satisfied with them in the past, but that doesn't mean you'll love them.

			-- Jennie