This is not at all as easy as it seems. Conventional wisdom says, go online and do a Google search on phrases such as “discount airfare” or “cheap airfare” or “airfare consolidator.”

That works if you have hours of infinite patience and an attention to detail that only a bookkeeper would love. A search like that usually returns between a gazillion and a mega-gazillion web pages, most of them either totally useless or too complicated or simply over-priced. Then there are the outrageously phony “deals.”

What to do?

I tried a few travel agents. Not much better.

Cancel the trip.

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No!

(Oh, that was a close one).