stewaran

i have seen people on FT mention Kayak.com and others and wondered if i am missing something. I book all my flights on BA.com

Is there a price and/or service benefit to booking elsewhere, either on the web or with a TA?. (I work for a small company so would not get any corporate travel deals)

how does everyone here book there travel? and how does it work for you?

G-AVFC

Personally I use a variety of methods to search for prices in the first place. Then, depending on whether I want to AFU I would book on ba.com or not. If I wanted to take advantage of the possibility of a poug then I would book on ba.com. If I was booking for several people at a time I might want to use another booking service to avoid paying cc fee for each passenger, unless of course, I wanted to use a debit card.

My main strategy is to compare prices on several sites including ba.com, kayak, Expedia, ITA, Liligo, Wexas, etc and book according to the upgrade or not that I am looking for.

Having said all of that, any offers or sales or discount codes that come along from time to time, e.g. The Avis 25% off CE promotion, will also have an influence on my ultimate booking engine decision.

HIDDY

Kayak is just a fare search site....and a very good one at that. The search results will provide links to the companies who are selling tickets at the prices shown.
The days where travel agents offered cheaper fares than the airlines seem to be mostly gone now although Expedia do sometimes offer "Special Fares" which can be cheaper.
Of course as you probably know your booking will stay under TA ownership until 24 hours of departure which means no upgrading with miles and any changes will have to be done through them and not BA.
I used to book most of my tickets through travel agents but with the extra fees they now add it just isn't worth it unless you want a multiple airline ticket.

Raffles

For long hauls, as recently discussed, it is worth pricing it up on ba.com with a hotel or car hire added (which you don't need to use). Can come out cheaper as it prices up using the cheaper air fares only available to travel agents.

Rickers

Also worth checking on Quidco (or similar) --- I booked my last CE family trip this way, and got (I think) 2.5% cashback, which was a reasonable wodge of cash ^

ajinlondon

all depends on your travel needs - do you book premium cabins and regularly then I advise asking a TA ( I am one myself but giving you my considered opinion)

or book economy but looking to travel mid week and avoid the Sat night min stay - use a TA.

If you book coach 4 weeks out and try and find the cheapest then beyond the service element of calling a TA's support price wise there isn't much can be done on a GBP 500 ticket when half of that is tax.
I often say would you be happy with a 20% discount on a 300-400 GBP ticket (inc tax) that 20% equals around GBP15 due to the actual ticket costing so little (after taxes) so usually disappointment..

Only other thing to add is if you have no status then a PSA agent pays for itself.

The online game (expedia/ kayak) etc is rarely of value usually due to timing of the search (and seating becoming available) rather than actually getting a saving (in BA's case, other airlines aren't so smart)

exilencfc

I've got some reasonable deals from STA but I think their really good fares are reserved for students and they specialise in cheaper airlines anyway

erik123

Check fares on IB and AA (codeshares) as this can work out a bit cheaper. Check fares using a discounter - though from NYC I don't see BA show up much (but AA quite a lot).

alexss

This week I went BA to MAD for Ł200 when all websites bar one were selling the same flights for almost Ł500 (including ba.com). So sometimes you can find lower fare by searching Kayak or elsewhere. In this case I searched Kayak and the fare was sold by lastminute.com.

Not sure why this lower price would have come up. I think it was an IB ticket as it showed IB flight numbers but for two BA operated flights, which might explain it. My mobile boarding pass got a very suspicious look when I got on the outward flight but after a lengthy wait and consultation with the purser I was allowed on!

stewaran

Thanks all

I either buy cheap economy tickets, or WT+ when it's cheap and mfu to CW(thanks to FT)

Is there a danger of not getting TP's or miles if you book through other websites ?

ExpatSomchai

Another good search engine is www.fly.com

EuropeanPete

I use skyscanner.net when I'm open to alternative airlines to BA. They seem to have the same set of scraped sites as others, but I find their search tool more powerful.

airplanepeanuts

I would suggest you all use http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

this is the service that is behind kayak and most other search engines

try it out let us know what you think.

Raffles

No.

Unless you are very unlucky and find a bent seller who is selling award tickets, which of course generate no miles.

BA-Flyer

Unless I'm missing an option somewhere, it looks as though SkyScanner does not include business fares?