By Greg Mills

I just finished buying airline tickets for my wife, daughter and myself to fly to Florida for my sister-in-law's wedding. I hate the tricks, extra fees and taxes that get tacked on after you think you have a good deal. Apple has a way of fixing the most egregious tasks we face and making it as close to fun as spending money can be.  

The current system for buying airline tickets on-line is nuts. You have tons of web sites that claim to be the cheapest all, clamoring to sell the same seats, all at different prices. It has
been said that normally, passengers on the same flight have paid as many as 10 different prices for the very same flight. To me that sounds like a system failure.  

Part of the problem is the stupid hub system where you can't fly anywhere without changing planes at a hub. I have flown from Kansas City to Atlanta just to get on a flight to Los Angeles.

The airlines churn ticket prices to the point where price is gone before you can enter your credit card number. I bet Apple can smooth this all out. Imagine an app that would run on a Mac, iPhone and/or iPad that would smooth the whole thing out and automatically watch the prices and grab your tickets at the right moment.

I know there are tons of web sites that promise to do that. However,Apple has a way of delivering the goods when they undertake such things while I have been both disappointed and furious at some of the largest travel web sites.

I bought the ticket for my sister-in-law to fly out to visit us a while back and missed a change of airports that wasted her time and cost her both extra baggage fees and ground transportation fees that were not disclosed in the information on the e-ticket.    

I know Apple and I bet they could both smooth out the ticketing nightmare and twist the airlines' arms to get competitive prices.

Greg Mills does faux wall art (http://www.gregmills.info) and runs Cottage Industry Solar Shops (http://www.cottageindustrysolar.com).