Orbitz blocking Beijing bookings?
 

Looking to fly to Beijing this summer. Tried Orbitz and got an error message noting that Beijing is not a valid airport code (PEK, PKS, or BJS). Have not had similar issues with justfly.com, cheapoair.com, or a variety of others.

Is Orbitz now banning us from booking all travel to China?

Anyone else have similar experience on other booking sites or to other destinations in China?

Who is "us"?

AA showing its scheduled flight on random dates, Whether those will actually operate remains to be seen.

What exact date, carrier & flights are you seeking?

op asked about orbitz, not aa.

and yes it does come up as invalid for me as well on o

Perhaps he should just try a website that works? If he doesn't want to fly AA, try someone else.

As noted, it may make no difference as service may not come back or may not come back at the pre-virus levels.

They are probably blocking bookings because nobody/no airline knows what the schedule is going to be for the summer. From any rational standpoint, it's better to hold off announcing a summer schedule until the virus situation becomes clearer. From Orbitz' standpoint, it's better to not allow bookings rather than have to do a pile of rebookings/refunds because whatever is booked now, will bear no semblance of what summer reality will be. I'd expect more OTA's and airlines to decide to do the same sort of blocking at least in the short term.

Started a couple of days ago on Chase portal and Expedia, even looking for flights in the next couple of days. Guess they don't want to spend the extra customer service time servicing bookings with high odds of changing.

The other day I was on Expedia looking for flights to Taipei for this spring. I was pulling up *insane* prices - like $450 r/t from JFK - on Chinese carriers connecting in China.

However, when I input the exact same dates of travel but with the Chinese destination of the stopover (say, PVG), the search said "no flights available."

I was searching for a trip to Beijing this summer as I have a teaching assignment there for five weeks. Out July 8 or 9, back August 16. I don't really care what airline I fly...trying to credit to Delta. Did see a J fare on ANA for around $2500 from JFK on a different site. i will likely just go with that...new seats all the way through. Seems as though some sites will let you book to / from China, while others won't. Just curious to see what others' experience was.

For crediting to DL, MU or KE are your best options, then connections using other SkyTeam partners, assuming that DL doesn't resume service to mainland China by then.

I absolutely would avoid using an OLTA in this situation. You'll be at the mercy of their probab ly horrendous customer service.

I prefer dealing with non-wholeinthewall OTAs to direct with all Chinese airlines, and most other Asian airlines.

So far, I've had great luck with Justfly.com and believe it or not, CheapoAir.com. The only issues I usually run into is that if you don't book directly with the airlines, many times, you cannot manage your booking online and it complicates things like meal selection, seat assignments, etc.

These sites will also not let you book hotels. I just tried on expedia-owned hotel.com (for s**s and giggles)