Let's go fly

A picked out a kite today at Costco. It looks like a scarlet macaw. He's busy banging it into every piece of furniture downstairs right now.

I called the airline to buy A a ticket for our flight to CO in June. The woman who got me was brand spanking new and was extremely well-intentioned but completely incapable of getting me a ticket for A. Having done this a couple times now, I know the process:

1. They have to create a completely new reservation for A since adding to ours results in change fees.
2. They have to put in some overrides on whatever the current pricing is to buy another seat with the discount code we bought our ticket under.
3. They have to mark this seat as "infant" and put it through some algorithm to come up with a price that's 50% less than the adult ticket.
4. They have to apply his frequent flier number.
   
5. They have to apply taxes and fees, which makes the price closer to 25% off the adult ticket.
6. They have to add a note to his reservation that says "Infant traveling with parents."
   
7. They have to seat him with us.
   
8. They have to cross-reference our reservation with his reservation just in case the seating changes for some reason and someone tries to seat an infant away from his parents.
9. They have to take the $15 phone ticketing fee off since they don't allow infant seats to be purchased through the website.

This is a little complicated for one's first day of ticketing, don't you think? After a couple game tries, she put me through to a supervisor. I felt so bad for her that at the end of the call, I told the supervisor that the new person had been very kind and accommodating and that she should pass my regards along to her, that I understood this was a weird thing.

This will probably be his last flight as an infant. Sigh.