TASK DEFINITION: Given a travel related situation, and given a specific question about the situation, summarize the question into a title
PROBLEM: My old passport was damaged by a cup of coffee, so I have to renew it. It will take around 2 weeks for the new passport to come. But I'm in a hurry to apply for a Tier 4 UK visa.

The old passport was snipped by the authority and would no longer be valid. But all my personal information including the number can be recognized. And the number will be noted on my new passport.

Can I make an application or even an appointment with my old passport number, and get to the visa center with my new passport? 

It would be very nice of you if you can answer my question.


SOLUTION: Can I make a UK visa application with my OLD passport number and wait for my new passport?

PROBLEM: Until early October, the Azuon tool was worth the subscription fee to me.  But it has been non-functional since then.  Former use: put in an entire country for origin, box populates with all the airports in the country. Same for destination. Put in earliest date, latest date (any two). Click “search” and wait five minutes or more and see a table of five hundred flights with accurate fares. Pick one and book it. NOW, it says NOBODY flies from USA to Taiwan or Europe or Korea, and only Southwest flies within North America. Skyscanner, for comparison, makes you pick one origin and destination before estimating prices, and then a specific date to find the real price.

Anyone familiar with Azuon and aware of something similar?

Yes, Skyscanner is similar, but not close in value, primarily because it makes you select a single origin and destination before it shows prices, and those prices are always very inaccurate estimates.

azair.com is closer, but it doesn't know some airports exist, its user-interface is clumsy, and it often complains that some problem prevented it returning results.

Updates: Azuon has made some bug fixes and some of the problems have gone away.  But it still said "no fares found" for any Korean airport to any US airport for the entire month of March.  As for AzAir.com, yesterday it offered me a dozen flights USA to Spain for $1.99 !! (Of course, they all got error messages from the actual airline.) 

Well, I guess the answer is either go back to the old method of spending a hundred dollars worth of time to save a hundred fifty; or just hire someone like chimpando.  I may give the latter a test run.


SOLUTION: Are there any alternatives to Azuon?

PROBLEM: On Friday I booked a flight with AirBerlin and paid with PayPal. The ticket was issued correctly (I received the booking and ticket numbers and an invoice) but they payment has been stuck in Pending state in PayPal since then (I paid with a prepaid card from my bank linked to my PayPal account).

Today I called the airline to make sure everything was okay and they told me they received the money, to not worry and to wait for PayPal to refresh the status of the payment.

So I called PayPal and they told me the amount had only been authorized but the payment had never been completed.

Called again the airline with the info from PayPal but they said the same thing as the first time.

Also PayPal told me it could take up to a month before the authorized amount is unblocked from my card.

I'm worried that if nothing changes when the authorization expires and the money is unfrozen the booking will be cancelled and at that point a ticket might cost a lot more.

Has anyone been in this situation before? What do you suggest? 


SOLUTION:
Flight booked but card not charged