I travel several times a year for business, and when I can, I like to fly from Long Island's MacArthur airport in Islip instead of any of the New York City airports. Islip is a 20 to 30 minute drive through backroads that aren't subject to massive traffic delays. The nearest city airport is only about 50 miles, but can be a two hour ride or more if there's an accident on any of the major highways or the weather is bad. Long -term parking at Islip is inside the airport, or if I want to take a cab, it's about $35, vs over $100 top get to the closest city airport.

The down side of traveling from Islip, is that there are only a handful of airlines that fly out of Islip, and some of them only have a few flights in and out a day. Many flights from Islip also

require a change of planes at some other airport. Normally that's not a problem. There's usually only one change of planes and the layovers are usually relatively short.

But I was just trying to make reservations for a trip I'll be making later this year - a trip that requires me to go to one city, stay there a couple of days, fly to another, spend a few days more, and then come home. That schedule pretty much means I'm looking at buying a series of one-way tickets.

Southwest Airlines had reasonable prices for my itinerary, but the last scheduled flight on the day I want to return leaves too early in the afternoon for my needs, and I'd prefer not staying an extra night.

So, next I tried Continental. Wrong decision! I plugged in the time I wanted to leave, and got results...but was amazed at what I read. Yes, I could book a flight from Houston to Islip, but it would take me 48 hours to get home! I'd be leaving Houston at 9 PM and flying to Kansas City MO, arriving at 11 PM, leaving Kansas the next day and getting to Newark NY/NJ at 3:30 - leaving there at 4:30 and flying to Boston, then laying over in Boston until 4:10 the NEXT day and then flying into Islip.

That kind of scheduling is crazy! To me it would make more sense for the airline to just say, sorry, there's no flights available that meet your needs.