Hi all,

I have a little question for those travel savvy people out there that know the ins and outs of the travel agent business.

For the last couple of days I tried to book a trip DUS-ORD-LAS on either LH or UA in eco. The travel agent I'm usually working with told me that the transatlantic segment for the return trip was totally sold out, all I could get was waitlist in V, Q or H. Then I shopped around on the web. I found an offer for those flights on cheaptickets.com for about 745 USD in eco (don't know which class). Much to my surprise, the UA web site offered the same flight for 698 USD with confirmed seats, which - of course - I booked.

Now I'm wondering - why was my travel agent unable to reserve those seats (there were 3-4 free seats per segment on the UA web site)? Is it because my agent is located in Germany? Any hint appreciated

Mizu

Is the UA/LH flight a code share? If the LH flight was sold out in your requested seat class, United may still have had seats within their codeshare allotment. Did your travel agent use direct access to research real time seat avaialbility? Even the CRS systems sometimes show faulty seat data. The only way to know for sure (in oversold situations) is to use direct access. As far as cheap tickets, most of the flights they sell are in bulk and many(not all) do not earn miles.

Yes, it is a codeshare flight, operated by United. For the records:
Jun 13 DUS-ORD UA 953
Jun 13 ORD-LAS UA 711
Jun 18 LAS-ORD UA 1588
Jun 18 ORD-DUS UA 952
The LH portion was sold out, at lufthansa.com they offered UA seats, but for a horrendous price (don't remember the exact figure). In my experience booking through lufthansa.com only makes sense if you fly LH on a LH operated flight in most segments (Rudi: any other thoughts on this?)
The travel agent used real time access. I just quoted the cheaptickets.com fare for comparison...

And seats could become available within minutes - somebody cancelled. I've had the experience on the web - even with fare fluctuations. It's a volatile industry.

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DtG

dgordon is right, seats can appear and vanish at any moment. Fares are updated 4 times a day. Sometimes incredible fares will become available due to typos or other errors, and will disappear in 6 hours.

TropicalFlyer just bought a $167 RT on Air France from HNL to Paris!

THAT is a great price for that trip. Well, Paris is nice, but for us chilled European folks actually leaving Hawaii seems not very desirable, even with such a great deal I'm sticking with LH/UA 'cause I hope to make it to Senator by August... [insert silent prayer to the god of FT Evangelists ]

Back to the original question of travel agent vs. web sites. My preference is to research myself and then I present my research to my agent with a challenge to "beat that!" My agent can usually beat it but certainly always matches it. In the end, I always have my agent book and ticket it for me as an agent can offer certain perks that I have not been able to get from a web site. They are:
1) Free travel Insurance
2) A few discount coupons here and there
3) On my HKG flights I always get free airport/Downtown ground transfers.
4) On multiple legs, I can get all flights on one booking. This has been especially useful when my agent ticketed seventeen flights for latinpass on one booking. This technically means that a flight delay will also make changing reservations for next flight a lot easier.
5) Plus I can help another person make a living.
6) Whenever I have a special request, my agent really tries hard to secure it for me. IE: My son had his 11th Birthday while flying across the pacific on the 17 hour HKG-YYZ flight and we were able to get a birthday cake on board (no candles though).

Go with an agent if you can but especially so if you travel a lot and need that extra hand to ticket and "watch out" for your best interests. Also, a lot easier to get refunds if needed.

I too have questions about travel agents, at least the one my dad went through. I had found fares on expedia.com for fares over 30 days and were under $400 from SMF-JAX. When I printed them out and my dad took em to the travel agent to use them as a basis. She looked in her computer and said that the fares were either booked or under 30 days. So, because of her, I am only going to be able to stay in JAX for under 30 days when i had wanted to stay the whole summer. When I book (after I turn 18)I will either do it over the phone with an airline after I find the cheap price on the net or just buy the tickets online, I dont trust there computer systems.

Without knowing all the details, it is hard to give an answer to your specific question. However, here is one possibility. Most airlines have a 30-day maximum stay on their least expensive fares. The two major exceptions are America West and Southwest. Since America West doesn't fly to Jacksonville, that leaves Southwest.

Southwest does not list the availability of their flights in most of the travel agency computers in order to save money. If your travel agent just looked at her computer, she might not have seen the Southwest flights. In order to check on availability for Southwest, a travel agent either needs to go their website or call them on the phone. If she didn't do that, it would have been a mistake and omission on her part.

Please note this is just speculation, and I don't want to blame someone without knowing the details.

I have become disenchanted with travel agents lately, mainly because most of them in Charlotte are tacking on fees for ticketing. If they can substantailly beat my personally researched price, then I would not object to the fees, but they usually do no better than matching or beating by a couple of bucks. So, I research online and then if I have questions/problems I call the airline directly.

It is pretty obvious that the airline industry is in the process of pretty much eliminating travel agent involvement with web-savvy travelers, by the recent enhancements made to the web sites that I visit to book travel on.