My wife, Josie, is considering a trip back to the US with money she saved for just that purpose. She normally travels using Philippine Airlines, but the current fares are averaging $1000 each for one-way trips from Manila to Phoenix, with more than one stop. I know there are cheaper flights than that. It turns out that Hawaiian Airline flights are at $766 right now, but going up in mid-March to $866. The only stop is in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Web Searching

I'm not surprised that the big online travel agencies like Travelocity, Orbitz and others have no services for one-way flights originating in Manila (it's easy to find cheap flights to Manila, but not the other way around). I had to go to the Philippine Airlines site itself to see what the fares were running these days.

I went to a lot of websites of the major carriers such as Northwest and Continental, but the fares of most of the airlines were either near the prices charged by Philippine Airlines or more expensive.

Josie mentioned Hawaiian Airlines to me because one of her friends swore it was cheaper than the rest. She was right as far as I'm concerned, although I didn't check airlines like China Airlines or Korean Airlines. Josie wouldn't fly on them if they were half-priced. She doesn't trust them and I don't blame her.

Why the trip?

If she goes through with it, Josie will be in the US for six months and she'll be staying with our older son, his wife and our grandson. Yes, I'm a grandpa and proud of it.

Josie's former employer rehired her the first time she went back to the US and without question. I'm pretty sure they'll do the same thing this time. We'll find out in a few hours. Naturally, she wants a guarantee of employment before spending her savings on a one-way plane ticket. Her supervisor, with hiring authority, told her when she left that he would hire her back in a heartbeat and would even give her a raise. I wonder how it's going to play out.

I don't want Josie to leave for any period of time. The family separations should have ended when I finished military service in 1998. She wants to go, however, and there's really nothing I can do to stop her. She has no patience.

We still need a washing machine and a dryer, one or two portable air conditioners, and we need to finish roofing and painting our dirty kitchen and laundry room extension to the house.

Money will be tight for me until after April due to my requirement to pay income taxes (I'm not sure I'll have to pay yet, but I'm a pessimist about these things – I almost always have to pay the state taxes before I get the federal refund) and my younger son's tuition for the next semester of nursing school. There are a couple of other expenses I don't want to mention, but it should be enough to say that money will be extremely tight until May.

The rainy season starts around June and we won't have the roof on the dirty kitchen. My wife wants a roof on it before it starts raining because the wood support frame is already in place. I think she just wants to bail before it gets really hot in April.

Buying the Ticket

I and the wife will be stopping by a travel agency in the next day or two to see if they can beat the $766 or at least keep it the same as advertised by Hawaiian Airlines, which would be between 34,000 and 36,000 pesos depending on the foreign currency exchange rate at the time.

If the travel agent can't or won't meet or beat the price, I can purchase the ticket online using my trusty VISA Electron Card and Josie can get the eTicket at the airlines terminal. Well, I hope it works that way at the Manila airport.

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