Originally Posted by
frenchtouch
Hi,
I recently booked a flight through a travel agent. I usually never do it but I was desperate to find a cheap flight back from Cancun to JFK peak winter break for me and my familly. The flights were above $1000 per person on Delta Economy.
The travel agent was able to book 4 tickets for a total of $600. I have the delta reservation number and I could check it's a legitimate booking, I could modify my seats, etc.. Fare class X.
It makes me question the whole principle of always booking via the company website when this travel agent was able to book for 6x less. Is this something common? I book 10/12 flights a year and never saw that before.
Best,
Are all four tickets booked in X, and do all four have the same price in the receipt? If there were 3 seats in a low fare class left, but you searched for 4, Delta would quote you all four seats at the higher price. A travel agent may have been savvy enough to split the reservation into separate bookings to capture lower priced availability. (Probably doesn't account for the scale of difference you saw here, though.)
If your receipt(s) from the travel agent have a fare construction line, that would also be useful in deciphering how they were able to get a lower fare. The route and dates would also be useful, if you are comfortable sharing that (rough dates are probably somewhat useful if you're concerned about privacy, although exact would be more accurate).
A fare construction line would look something like this: SEA DL LAX32.10VAUSA0ME/EQM14 DL SEA32.09VAUSA0ME/EQM14 USD64.19END ZP SEALAX XF SEA4.5LAX4.5
Alternatively, you may have been sold consolidator tickets, which are bulk discounted tickets that Delta sells to travel agents and tour package companies. If so, you may have been able to get similar rates by booking through Delta Vacations...