Background
When I planned my Saudi Arabia trip back in Feb this year, I realised that I fares to Saudi were over NZD200 more than to some European destinations with a stopover in Saudi.
So, I booked an itinerary to Spain (into Madrid, then Valencia, Andorra and finally out of Barcelona) with a 3 week stopover in Saudi Arabia.
The pricing for this was a bit complex and I couldn’t throw the domestic flights into the same booking.
This was all good until my generous and safe domestic flight connection upon arrival into the country got cancelled, many months ago. It meant a very long wait or an unsafe 3h10 self-connect upon arriving into the country.
I chose the shorter self-connect and was willing to buy a new ticket if necessary due to delay to my international inbound flight. But I wasn’t too happy.
Reviewing my plans
Eric, my upcoming travel companion had only just booked his flights for the trip only yesterday.
I had held off accepting the minor changes to my main itinerary from Kuala Lumpur to Spain via Saudi. But yesterday, I asked Saudia (the airline) if they would refund my ticket if I didn’t accept the schedule change and they confirmed in the affirmative.
This was prompted by some new developments in the previous months. I now get staff tickets on Malaysia Airlines and there are two flights from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah if I choose to go one day earlier, and both were showing good availability.
The outcome
After a consideration of what I really wanted to do, costs and risks, I concluded with this itinerary:
- Standby on Malaysia Airlines from Kuala Lumpur to Jeddah and arrive one night earlier than the original plan, de-risking my connection to the domestic flight.
- Depart a day later on standby on Thai Airways to Bangkok. After a few days, I would then continue to Kuala Lumpur (and Genting Highlands), either on standby or a budget airline which I would book once Saudia has processed my refund (it took only 2 days for my previous full refund).
- I would skip Spain and Andorra completely. While I had been to both Madrid and Barcelona before, both Valencia and Andorra and Andorra would be new to me. But I didn’t feel that I needed to go to Spain and the standby situation to Jeddah was very palatable one week from departure.
I booked the standby flights immediately as they were fully refundable. It was a stressful few days waiting for Saudi to process the refund before I could complete the rest of my travel arrangements, namely the flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and various hotels along the way.
I did consider other options:
- Rebooking Saudia on the same routing but with a slightly different time to de-risk my self-connect to my domestic flight. The price had actually decreased slightly in MYR but the exchange rate wasn’t in my favour now.
- Exploring the east of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar but it would be a travelling solo in those places.