Online booking a cinch

As usual I'd left the most important element of my trip to the last minute. Two weeks out from a holiday in Hawaii that had been arranged in exquisite detail, I'd omitted to book my flights. (Don't ask.) Now, with just a few days until we left, I barely had time to head out for lunch, let alone to the travel agent. So I made the travel agent come to me.

I wouldn't normally book international flights online, although the few times I've needed to fly to Wellington or the South Island I've gone to cyberspace without hesitation. There's something about typing your credit card numbers into those little white boxes and watching your bank details float away to the ether that demands utmost faith in the system. But arranging to travel to another country and home again by hitting a few keys at the computer almost seemed too good to be true.

A quick look at various airlines and travel agent websites showed that Air New Zealand had the cheapest return fare to Honolulu. Good news, considering I'd accumulated a significant number of airpoints, and my accommodation had been taken care of. All I had to arrange was the flight.

I don't know why I expected it would be more complicated than booking a domestic flight but there was actually very little difference.

The home page gets you off to a quick start. It's just a matter of ticking the appropriate boxes if you want a return or one-way flight, selecting your departure and destination cities, the dates you need to travel, whether these are flexible (in my case, yes), and how many people are travelling.

The next page is a newer development on the Air NZ website: a big grid with dates across the top and down the left-hand side, designed to show when flights leave that week, and how they stack-up price-wise. The box where the two intersect shows the price of the fare. I'm particularly grateful for this because it turns out to be more expensive than I'd hoped. If I leave two days later I will save $400.

Altering the dates is simple too. Once modified, you're then directed to the itinerary page and asked for your preferred method of payment: credit card or airpoints, although it's possible to pay using both. I booked one flight using airpoints and the other on my credit card. It's then just a matter of entering those details, confirming the payment and voila - your flight itinerary is automatically emailed to your inbox. This whole process took me just over 10 minutes, including enough time to call my partner and check that he preferred the cheaper fare departing on a different day. The process was so simple it's probably worrying the human travel agents. But for those who don't need to concern themselves with anything more complicated than booking flights, it's hardly worth leaving your office.

* See Airnz.co.nz to book international flights.