The American Airlines website hates me. Every month I go there to begin trying to work out my itinerary for the next month’s trip, and every month it lies to me. No matter where it is I’m trying to go, how I want to get there, where I want to fly from or when I want to fly, it always tells me: “No flights were found matching your request.”

For this latest round I’m trying to get to Fort Smith, AR. They have a small regional airport there and I’ve been to its website, which assures me that they have several flights a day from Dallas/Ft. Worth and that American Eagle flies there. Since DFW is American’s hub, you’d think it would be a pretty easy 2-flight affair, wouldn’t you? BUR -> DFW -> FSM, piece of cake, right? Wrong.

American’s website says I can’t get there from here. So just to see how badly it was lying, I told it I wanted to go just to DFW from Burbank because I know there are at least two and I think three direct flights a day. I know this because I flew them twice a month for a year. In fact, I flew one of them last month when I went to Manchester. So I checked this with the AA website, asking for a flight from BUR to DFW. And it suggests:

Fly Aloha Airlines from Burbank to Las Vegas.
Fly Continental from Las Vegas to Houston.
Fly American from Houston to Dallas.
And this itinerary begins at 10 pm and ends at 9 am the next day.

I think I need a travel agent.