My grandmother passed away this Sunday, and for the past few days I’ve been scrambling to get to where she lived so my wife, sister and I can attend her funeral. So, on Monday morning, my wife and I each went our bosses to request time off for bereavement so that we could book our flights to get make the wake on Thursday and funeral on Saturday. “Flights to where?”, you might ask. Amsterdam. My mother’s family is from Holland, and we were forced to buy last minute airfare to Europe.

But that’s not the half of it. My sister is a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda. If you thought booking last minute flights from the U.S. to Europe might be difficult, don’t even bother booking tickets leaving from Africa. It’s a nightmare.

Miami to Amsterdam
My wife and I live in Florida, in a suburb of Orlando. On Monday morning, after I got the corporate go ahead to leave for a week for bereavement, I hit Mobissimo.com and immediately started searching for flights that left from Orlando and arrived in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the cheapest roundtrip fare I could find was nearly $2,000 a person. The thought of spending almost $4,000 on airfare for my wife and myself was terrifying.

So I branched out my search to nearby airports and found roundtrip airfare for $800 a person. The only problem with that is that it departs from Miami International Airport, which is a four hour drive from where we live. So, thankfully we found last minute airfare to Europe for a surprisingly low price. The only catch is that we have to drive four hours out of our way to get to the airport.

What we’re doing to catch our flight tomorrow is we rented a car for $40 one way from Orlando to Miami. By renting a car, we’re not only avoiding wear and tear on our own vehicles, we also don’t have to bother with finding parking. And here’s the kicker… the $80 of two one way car rentals is cheaper than airport parking.

Uganda to Amsterdam
Flights from the U.S. was easy, Uganda was a nightmare. My sister is a Peace Corps volunteer in the outskirts of Kampala, which is the capitol of Uganda. She has a cell phone which we use to talk to her with my Skype phone, and I was luckily able to coordinate a schedule with which she could work with. So, just like with my Miami tickets, I dutifully logged on to Mobissimo and started searching for airfare.

Amazingly, I found roundtrip tickets for around $1,000. Considering this was a last minute booking out of Africa, the price was amazing. But there was a slight problem. Because of the rampant credit card fraud in Africa, you are not allowed to book travel online. The only means to purchase airfare is to walk into the airport and pay cash for an upcoming flight.

My sister, being that she works for a volunteer organization in the poorest region of the world, does not have the $1,000 to buy a plane ticket. For most Ugandans, $1,000 is more than they might see in a couple of years of work. So I frantically started calling travel agents hoping that they would accept a credit card over the phone for purchase. I lucked out with KLM, and promptly booked her tickets.

Credit card woes
And that’s where the trouble really kicked off. As soon as I booked my sister’s airfare using my credit card, Bank of America (my card provider) locked down my account because of potentially fraudulant purchases. Apparently, airfare purchases which originate from Africa immediately cause Bank of America to lock down your account. In most situations, I would be eternally grateful for my bank looking out for my money. But considering my Miami airfare purchase hadn’t yet cleared my account, I was sweating bullets. After all, if, for some reason my Miami purchase wasn’t allowed to go through, I would have to repurchase new tickets for an even greater cost.

Thankfully, after calling my credit card company and explaining my situation, they quickly removed the lock on my account and allowed all my purchases to go through. After the whole ordeal, and nearly three hours on the hone, my family is on it’s way to Amsterdam!

And on top of that, I was called by not one, not two, but six different agencies that wanted to verify that I was who I said I was, and that I was indeed purchasing airfare for my sister. I had no idea that these flights were so tightly controlled, or that my purchases might be watched so closely.

The final cost
So what was the final cost for flying two people from Florida and one person from Uganda to Amsterdam with no advance notice? A little over $3,000. And that doesn’t even take any potential hotel, dining, or other expenses we will occur while we’re out there. Consider the dollar is at an all time low against the Euro, I won’t be looking forward to my credit card statement at the end of May.