Getting airline tickets to gal in Ukraine

[Albert]

I am getting ready to take (or meet) one of my gals to Turkey for a month.  I have taken several FSU gals to such places.  This gal and I have already spent a couple of months together previously, so skip the comments about dangers of spending time with new gal outside her home area, etc.   And, I guess everyone here knows I am not new to this, so you can skip all the normal advice about red flags, etc.  I am just looking for info re plane tickets.

About 3 years back, I bought ticket from Aeroflot in NYC and it was held in an FSU city for the gal to pick up.  On another couple of such vacation trips, the gals bought the tickets themselves and I reimbursed while we were together.  On most recent trips, I was in the FSU city with the gals, and we purchased vacation tickets and tour packages together in their city.

Now, I am back in situation where I want to purchase the ticket here in USA and somehow get it to a gal in Ukraine.  When I went the Aeroflot path noted above, it was quite a 'pain in a$$' dealing with Aeroflot.  Requirements of faxing info back and forth, providing copies of my credit card, drivers license, etc.  And, dealing with busy phone lines, lines going dead, being cut-off several times, the general poor service, etc.  So I would like to stay away from dealing with Aeroflot offices, if possible.

1) Has anyone had experience in buying tickets through Expedia, Travelocity, or other such places . . . . AND . . . . having the ticket made available for pickup in Ukraine at the office of Aeroflot or Aerosvit, etc.

2) Many months back, I read on some message board that Aerosvit was selling tickets for Aeroflot flights.  And, that they were selling same for less than Aeroflot was charging.  I looked at Aerosvit website.  There, you are required to punch in From and To cities from their list which only has cities that Aerosvit itself services.  So I don't see how people have purchased from Aerosvit, tickets on Aeroflot flights to cities that Aerosvit does not also service.  Anyone have experience with this?

3) Any other suggestions on how to achieve this other than (a) sending money to gal in Ukraine and (b) getting paper tickets here and sending to gal in Ukraine?

[BC]

Depending on where she is flying to/from try www.thy.com and buy them as e ticket.

Worked fine for booking my upcoming flights to TU and the prices were great.. better than at the local travel agent.

[525i]

I do not know does this help, but I went to www.ukraine-international.com, selected from Borispol to Helsinki, entered the dates and then I gave the details of the woman, and selected an option she will pick the tickets at airport and I paid it with Visa. She called their number to verify that the tickets were available at airport.

So, if the airline company you are going to use has website that has the possibility to buy tickets for another person in another country, then it's a good choice.

[ronin308]

Albert it's really going to be up to the airline.  Another thing you might do if you trust the girl at all is get her to book a package through one of their tour operators.  I've done 2 trips with Turtess and both went very well.  The downside is that you have to fly to borispol and leave from there together.  I didn't mind this for 2 reasons, firstly it was cheaper for me to fly to Borispol and the 2 of us leave from there, including the hotel in Boripol for the night before than it was for mean to fly from the US, her from Ukraine and then find a hotel in Turkey.

As far as ticketing goes, it's going to be up to the individual airlines.  Some will let you do an e-ticket which means she just shows up to check in for the flight others like Ukraine International and Aerosvit let you buy the ticket via the website and pick the ticket up at the local airport.

[rose]

That's how I've resolved similar situation. I found a good deal for my friend at AirFrance, I was supposed pay for the ticket. She went to the AirFrance agency in her city in Russia. When everything was almost booked through that agency she discussed the payment option, and they've agreed to accept my payment by my credit card. I've sent them a photocopy of it, and a letter that I allow this agency to withdraw $xxx for the ticket, bought on the xxx name for the xxx flight, etc.
Everything worked out perfectly.

Maybe you can try to do something like that?

[Albert]

Update:  Thanks for all the responses.  I had no real options regarding airlines to use, given the desired departure and return times.  I was stuck with Aeroflot.  I checked with Expedia, et al in USA.  They had program to ship ticket to Ukraine at a cost of around $50.  But that puts the whole trip at the risk of the delivery system.  As discussed in other threads, this is a hit or miss propositions, no matter what delivery service is used.

Although I couldn't use Ukraine International as 525i suggested, just for curiosity I check their website.  They do allow for payment by credit card via Internet and for e-tickets.  Too bad that the much larger and well established Aeroflot is not up to speed on this yet.

In the end, I went the route of dealing with Aeroflot in NYC.  Unlike my previous experience with them a few years back, their phone system seems much improved.  My call was answered very quickly both of the times that I had to call.  Plus the gal knew how the system worked (paying here, picking up tickets there) very well.  Previously several of the gals were lost and only one guy knew how to do it.

You still have to go through the silly system of receiving fax from them, then returning fax with copies of your credit card and drivers license.

One screw up was that the gal told me nothing of a service fee to do this.  There was not a fee a few years back when I did it.  So not until the fax arrived, was I able to see that they had added a $50 service charge for the ability to pick up the ticket at an Aeroflot office in Ukraine.  Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but still a pi$$er that I was not told of this during the initial phone call when reservations were made and put on hold status.

But all in all, it was not an unpleasant experience.  If anyone else is interested in doing this; I would recommend asking for Luba in the NYC office of Aeroflot.  She was pretty sharp to deal with . . . other than not telling me about the $50 fee.

I hope that Aeroflot can get their act together some day by accepting credit card payments on the web and by using e-tickets.  Would save a lot of hassle for the customers.

[Albert]

[user=307]ronin308[/user] wrote:

 Another thing you might do if you trust the girl at all is get her to book a package through one of their tour operators.  I've done 2 trips with Turtess and both went very well.  The downside is that you have to fly to borispol and leave from there together.  I didn't mind this for 2 reasons, firstly it was cheaper for me to fly to Borispol and the 2 of us leave from there, including the hotel in Boripol for the night before than it was for mean to fly from the US, her from Ukraine and then find a hotel in Turkey.

Ronin, I have had previous experience in going from FSU cities using the tour packages like you mention.  I know how very inexpensive they are.

We tried that route this time also, but it just was not going to work out.   Major problem was that they simply do not make the itineraries available soon enough.  We were planning for 8 weeks out, and tours were only known for 3-4 weeks out.  Second, we are going for one month, and tours only available for 2 weeks.