My fare came up on Sidestep AND Kayak, which I consider credible. I may have been wrong to trust them, but it worked. I flew RT to Sao Paulo from DTW for under $700. Onetravel.com is another great resource.

Sounds like he's a more reliable student than I am! ;-)

I was thinking more of Yaatri who started the thread. Actually sidestep is not a booking engine or online travel agent - they just search other sites for deals and you make the actual bookings on the other sites. I am not as familiar with kayak (whether they are a booking site or just an aggregator) but I have heard lots of good things about them.

Kayak is similar to Sidestep. Searches a bunch of other sites, aggregates the data, and sends you off elsewhere for the actual booking. I use it extensively these days.

No, I did not do any research. I work hard for my money too. I looked at it this way. There is always the first time. I was paying with a credit card. My wife talked to them yesterday asking about mileage accrual. Within minutes of the conversation, the reservation appeared on NWA.COM. By the end of the day ticket numbers appeared too. So everything worked out well.

He may not have, but I did.. I've used bt-store.com for several years to book flights to Europe. Never a problem, always got my full miles and the best price I could find at the time (if it wasn't, I booked elsewhere).

I have never had a problem with Best Travel with which I had to deal with them after purchase, so I can't vouch for whether their after-sale service is better, worse or the same as Expedia, Travelocity, or the airlines, for that matter.

But the fact that I've never had a problem must mean something, I think.

YMMV, mine's been great.

Thanks for your post. Firstly, research means different things to different people. Secondly, what one does with the information that turns up as a result of the reasearch is also upto oneself. Thridly the threshold of risk is different for different people.

Also, keep in mind that if the ticket is purchased with a cc, it's pretty easy to dispute a fradulent charge. Most of my credit card companies immediately side with the consumer and force the merchant to prove the validity of the charge.

Interesting. They show a $210 savings per ticket over nwa.com on a random, pulled-out-of-the-air MSP-BKK itinerary at the end of May. Earns WP miles. Might be something to consider next time.

This is an option I would definitely consider in the future. The one drawback is the lack of 24 hour cancellation as per Customer First. If you cancel within 24 hours, you still have to pay a cancellation fee to the consolidator.

>>>>>>That website appears to be nothing more than a 'front' listing links to other sites and doing a bit of advertising for additional revenue.

[snip]

H and Z fares
 

To Asia especially, NWA won't directly sell H class (usually discounted Economy class, but allowing a stopover on the return in Japan AND a 90-day ticket, vs. 30-day for most discounted fares).
Also, NWA doesn't sell Z class fares to Asia, at least thru NWA.com.
So, you have to buy these from Consolidators.
Two I've used for LAX-Asia Z class (around $2200 for MNL, $3000 for other destinations, including BKK, SIN, and HKG) and MSP-BKK H Class are:
www.asia.com
www.angeltravel.com
Decent service, full WP miles (150% EQMs on Z fares, 100% for H fares). Bad news: often huge change fees, like $300 per ticket.

Just looks like an affiliate referral web site to me. I don't see anything special here, unless you need links to Travelocity, Orbitz, or other travel sites. However, I'm sure the site's owner would LOVE for you to use their links!

I did a little more research: The company is based in Monrovia, Calif., (city licensing information is here: http://www.nhanced.net/sites/site15/...ysumreport.pdf ), is incorporated in and registered by the state of California (Calif. Attorney General's registration number: 2065177) has a AA rating from the BBB and apparently has one branch - in Ljublanja, Slovenia :confused:.

Every time I've used Best Travel Store for Europe it's been on a blind fare - the quote comes up as "a major U.S. carrier." Since I almost always do MSP-AMS flights 41 and 42, bingo, that's NWA. (The site also offers named flights, but they seem to cost a lot more.)

I'm assuming the blind fare is so NWA can offload some cheap tickets without running afoul of some low-price guarantee elsewhere - like it's own Web site.

Anyhoo, I've been pleased with www.bt-store.com. Again, stay away if you like - that's more cheap tickets left for me an Yaatri...

Did you guys see post #6?

In post #3, someone asked the OP if they'd used a certain site, which had a name similar to what it turns out the OP had used. So, OP answered 'yes' to post #3 in post #4. After post #5 pointed out that the link in question was only a referral site, the OP realized the mistake, and posted the true link in post #6.