differences between ba.com and expedia?
 

I've just been booking a Y DME-LHR-LAX and back for a friend. It involves an overnight stop in LHR but less than 24 hours so no stop-over.

On ba.com it prices up all 4 segments in S bucket for the equivalent of £595.

On expedia the same flights are available for a very reasonable £515, with the TATL segments in the N bucket and the connections in S.

Does expedia.co.uk have access to fare buckets which are zero'd out on ba.com? The mixed S/N fare class is available on some other days, so it's not that.

(interesting pricing - £260 DME-LHR and £515 DME-LAX - when you take into account the YQ, they are almost giving away the TATL segments!).

Yes I believe they do......and always in a fare bucket where one can't claim the ba.com best fare guarantee on.

They have some LH Special Fares on sale just now I see.

I keep wondering at the frequent references to BA operating Lufthansa flights, but I guess it's long haul! (l/h)

Strangely as of this morning, expedia now matches the ba.com price, so was worthwhile booking when I saw the £515 fare late last night. (Expertflyer is still showing S9 N9, so I've no idea what's changed).

irmster,

It may well be that Expedia bought a block of seats off BA and Expedia are selling seats from that rather than normal fare buckets. In other words, they are wholesale / consolidator fares.

The thing is that BA.com (your local office) gets availability for your specific countyr/region. So, when expertflyer shows S9 N9, it does not mean that BA's Mosocw office will tell you the same. I know for sure that Expedia.com (USA) get availability for NA not for your specific country of departure. I am not sure where Expedia.co.uk gets its availability but I would think that it gets UK regardless of where you're departing from.

I learned it from my own example. I need to buy a business class (R) special retun fare from KBP to JFK and on the way back 'R' class was not available on the specific JFK-LHR flight that I wanted. Expertflyer showed R9 but Ba.com and the Kiev office were convincing me otherwise (putting me into 'C'). I priced it on Expedia.com (coz I knew per EF that the seats were there) and what do you - I got my special R fare. (I actually held an agent from the Kiev office on teh phone while I was booking the ticket and I was assured that 'R' class never appeared on their screen and was surprised that I booked it).

Another way to get around it - call a US/UK office, and pay/ticket it in your local office (have done it a few times when 'T' class was not but EF showed taht it was). The US office will have the same availability as shown on EF.

I think this way BA is restricting the number of tickets sold on special fares from otehr countries ('R' is much for flexible and cheaper than 'R' from the UK, where a compareable ticket would book into 'I' and be rather inflexible).

I'm not sure that Amazon sells airline tickets...

Why waste your own time? You could have figured it out by analogy what I meant to write...:confused: