SMOFCon Booking

Yesterday, I booked my airline tickets to Toronto for SMOFcon 31. I was presented with a number of unwelcome choices. United is my airline of choice for frequent-flyer-mileage reasons. I'd rather fly direct SFO-YYZ, but UA doesn't fly that directly, only via O'Hare, and I'd rather not have to risk changing planes there in December. United does have a code-share agreement with Air Canada, who does fly there directly, albeit that the direct flights cost more. Furthermore, the return fares on the Monday after SMOFCon are so high that it's actually cheaper to spend another night in Toronto (another room-night for CanSMOF, the convention sponsor) and return on Tuesday. Of course, I can only do that because I'm sufficiently senior at work to get enough time off to do so. My supervisor approved the extra day off and I booked the ticket. Only after that did I realize that the free-first-checked-bag offer on my United credit card doesn't apply to code-shares, so the more-expensive ticket will cost an extra $50 for my luggage as well. All because I don't want to go through ORD and risk getting stuck. Oh, well, I'll have an extra day in Toronto to look around, and I won't have to worry about getting to bed early the final night of SMOFCon in order to catch an early-morning flight back to SFO. Maybe I'll go see things I couldn't see during Torcon 3 on account of being too busy with a Worldcon.