<p>When schools ask me to contact their own travel agent to arrange flights to interviews, what exactly do I tell them? Do I point them out to flights I'd like to take and have them handle the booking, or do I just leave it all up to them to decide? If it's the latter, can I ask them to book the flights through a specific airline (for frequent flyer miles) and/or airport (my city has several airports, and one of them is just so much easier to get to), or is that being too pushy?</p>
<p>You should certainly communicate your preferences to the travel agent. </p>
<p>Typically the agent’s function is to centralize the school’s reimbursement, although they may be acting within certain restraints from the school with regard to price.</p>
<p>you can ask for all of those things-- its good to have done some research, if you have a flight you want to take you can ask for it. They probably have $$ limits, so if the flight is super expensive you might not be able to take it, but you don’t need to take the cheapest way there. Also re getting to the airports you can take a cab and charge them for it. Basically the role of the travel agent is that way you don’t have to get reimbursed (which can take awhile), and soemtimes they get better deals.</p>
<p>I would not worry too much about finding a flight before contacting them - there are a lot of factors that they will consider that you may not know before contacting them. Just make sure you know your schedule and transportation needs (like what days/times you can go, any special accommodations, etc) before you call.</p>
<p>They will usually accommodate your choice of airport (usually) but I would not recommend asking for an airline switch, as this is almost the definition of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Remember that they are paying for this trip, there is no reason to expect that they will throw in frequent flyer miles just to accommodate you, especially since any such request will either add cost or take them off THEIR preferred airline.</p>
<p>I disagree- I think its perfectly okay to ask for a preferred airline-- I did, and I got almost a free flight out of grad school visits. It helps that the airline that I wanted was the airline whose hub was near my school, but none of the schools had a problem with it. I called them up and asked for specific flights and they booked them for me. I coordinated with other people from my school so that I had friends to fly with for almost all of my flights, making it slightly less exhausting/stressful</p>
<p>it is quite appropriate if you have strong preferences in flight plans, to indicate them to the travel agent. The price of your preferred flight plan may be very similar to other options they may suggest-in which case they are likely to honor your request. However, since you are not paying, they are under no obligation to honor your requests.</p>
<p>So now I see it doesn’t hurt to just ask. Thanks, everyone! And ec1234, I hadn’t thought of coordinating flights with my friends. I hope we all end up interviewing at the same programs :-)</p>
<p>Oh, and a quick note if you’re going to be traveling through areas with less than ideal climates. A friend and I were booked on the same series of flights to get from Pittsburgh to Santa Barbara. I showed up at the airport two hours before my flight, got through ticketing and security pretty quickly, and was waiting at my gate about an hour before takeoff. They announced over the PA system that my flight was going to be canceled, but they had an earlier one about to leave they could fit anyone there onto. I took the flight, had my next connection in Chicago bumped to an earlier flight, and had my connection from LAX to Santa Barbara bumped up as well. I wound up getting to my hotel around 3 PM. My friend, being someone that likes to cut things close, got to the gate 15 minutes before it was supposed to board. That was when he found out it was canceled. He then faced canceled connections and overbooked flights all day, and wound up not getting in to SB until around 11 PM. So get there early!</p>