Booking Precision Air From Zanzibar: Only Aviator Works!

Putting the finishing touches on my South America and Africa trip. I survived an Avianca strike by some last minute ingenuity. One flight that was not part of this outstanding booking was Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam. The flight is operated by Precision Air and can be as cheap as $40. Because there’s nothing to do in Dar, I took the late night flight which is more expensive and went for $93.50.

The issue was trying to use a credit card. One after one, each of my credit cards was rejected. Chase Ink, Sapphire, and even Altitude did not work. I was about to give up and pay more to book through Expedia ($132) but took out my Aviator for one last try. Magically, it worked and I received the confirmation email. Then I received a fraud alert from Barclays saying that the transaction was not approved. I logged into the site and found this:

I said yes and the fraud alert was lifted. Who knows if the transaction would have been cancelled, but I wasn’t going to risk it.

This is not the first time I have heard that the Barclays card works where others do not. The other was at the train station in Milan where every card was rejected because I did not have a pin.