I've booked some quasi-complex itineraries (maybe not by ft standards) in the past and noticed that i can only book/view them through certain engines (orbitz, cheaptickets) on the last one.

Just booked CGK-YHZ, YHZ-ITM, Expedia didn't put together the flights I wanted, and no airline could even process the origin/desitnation for any flights let alone the ones I wanted.

That said why do we need them? In my mind it works something like this I give the flight data I want to website -> it passes it along to some system -> it reports back to me.

What is this "system" and why can't I access it? Why are they special that they can but I can't? Why can airline agents book a complex route over the phone, but not over the web? What computer program are they using? What data base are they accessing? Again why can't I access it? Or even have it tied to the web? Me telling someone what I want, only to have them type verbatim what I want into a computer and then read the output back to me instead of me viewing it seems criminally inefficient. The whole process is likely slower for their being there.

I just booked a flight, there were two charges in my bank, One from Air Canada, $10.99 from Orbitz. This leads me to belive this is an AC fare. (makes sense as 4 longest flights are AC) But why couldn't I access it from the AC website? Why couldn't any other site find it? $10.99 isn't gonna kill me, and the fare was still by far the cheapest/best deal compared to alternitives, but what exactly am I paying Orbitz for? It grinds my gears that I spend 30+ hours researching departures/desitnation/scheduling to find a deal, yet I'm paying a website simply because AC can't see the flight that is supposidly theirs, and I don't even know that its an AC flight until after I book it.