Travel Sites VS. Airline Sites
Oct 22, 2010, 7:32 am
#16
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 1,128
You will have a valid ticket if you buy on any of the sites you listed. It's very unlikely that they will choose to bump you because you bought your ticket from a third party. More important factors are fare class, time of check in and status. I have used a third party site every time I have flow AM, their web site is clunky and adds fees you don't have to pay at the third party sites. I've never had a problem. Be warned however, if you do need to change your tickets not only will you have to pay more you will be on hold for a very long time. If you are calling from Mexico this can get very expensive.
Last edited by Aliquot; Oct 22, 2010 at 7:41 am Reason: ?
Oct 22, 2010, 9:06 am
#17
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: GOT
Posts: 1,184
While in most cases it is favourable to book directly with the airline (regarding both fare AND accesibility to customer support) I've found that the reverse is often true with hotel programs (unless you enjoy special status such as elite, or similar).
Jul 16, 2011, 8:08 am
#19
Suspended
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: DCA
Programs: UA US CO AA DL FL
Posts: 50,262
Read the t&c of any third party website you use. Some, such as Expedia, impose t&c above and beyond the carrier. None of this matters until and unless something goes seriously wrong during your travels, such as the need for Carrier A to endorse ticket to Carrier B during IRROPS.
Also, same concern if you are travelling from a foreign airport which uses contract employees to handle your carrier's flights. They are generally trained only to handle simple transactions and may not be able to to work with other vendors. You may be stuck on cell phone back to USA.
Also, same concern if you are travelling from a foreign airport which uses contract employees to handle your carrier's flights. They are generally trained only to handle simple transactions and may not be able to to work with other vendors. You may be stuck on cell phone back to USA.
Oct 16, 2011, 8:27 pm
#20
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: PDX
Programs: HHonors Gold since '02, Hertz President's Circle since '07
Posts: 3,226
Seat Assignments
Not all third party sites allow you to choose seat assignments, CheapAir.com being one.
Cheapair seemed a convenient way to purchase a multiple airline flight for 2 travelers in one easy purchase. May still do so, but I wonder about access to changing seats.
Update: I booked it, and then went to MyTrips at CheapAir. I was then able to change seats using a standard seat map.
Other thoughts: Will I receive email/txt notification per my CO and AA prefs for online checkin, gates, flight updates, etc.?
Cheapair seemed a convenient way to purchase a multiple airline flight for 2 travelers in one easy purchase. May still do so, but I wonder about access to changing seats.
Update: I booked it, and then went to MyTrips at CheapAir. I was then able to change seats using a standard seat map.
Other thoughts: Will I receive email/txt notification per my CO and AA prefs for online checkin, gates, flight updates, etc.?
Last edited by Rut Dog; Oct 16, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Oct 17, 2011, 3:43 pm
#21
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: PDX
Programs: HHonors Gold since '02, Hertz President's Circle since '07
Posts: 3,226
Cheapair not bad at all
Continuing (see previous post) my Cheapair ticket consisted of one AA and one CO flight.
Logged into AA and the flight was already tied to my online profile. Nice. Double checked seat assignments and everything looked good. ^ for AA
Logged into CO and nothing visible. Didn't have PRN and I wanted to see if it would appear overnight. Next day nothing still.
for CO
Emailed Cheapair requesting PRN, and they replied in 10 minutes or less. Very nice. ^ for Cheapair for providing lightning quick email support, and my bad for not noticing that PRN's were in the original confirmation email.
Back to CO dot com, logged in, entered PRN, and retrieved reservation. Unfortunately on CO the itinerary is not saved, nor could I find any option for saving it (there was a "rename" option which I tried, but it did nothing). So when I log in to CO I will have to have the PRN. again for CO.
And even though there are 2 different PRN's, each airline displayed (but did not allow any changes to) the other airline's leg of the trip. This is different than if I had booked 2 one way trips.
I'm definitely pleased with my Cheapair experience, my first time straying away from airline's sites for a purchase. I've searched Cheapair and Kayak thousands of times, but while Kayak gets revenue on clickthrough's, Cheapair only makes money on purchases. Yes, they charge a $10 booking fee, but Entertainment has easy to use $15 off promo codes that net a $5 savings per ticket (woo hoo
).
Cheapair was much quicker and simpler than the oh so slow and clunky websites of both of these airlines. Overall Cheapair was a considerably better customer experience than I have received from either CO or AA.
What Cheapair could improve:
Logged into AA and the flight was already tied to my online profile. Nice. Double checked seat assignments and everything looked good. ^ for AA
Logged into CO and nothing visible. Didn't have PRN and I wanted to see if it would appear overnight. Next day nothing still.
for COEmailed Cheapair requesting PRN, and they replied in 10 minutes or less. Very nice. ^ for Cheapair for providing lightning quick email support, and my bad for not noticing that PRN's were in the original confirmation email.
Back to CO dot com, logged in, entered PRN, and retrieved reservation. Unfortunately on CO the itinerary is not saved, nor could I find any option for saving it (there was a "rename" option which I tried, but it did nothing). So when I log in to CO I will have to have the PRN.
again for CO.And even though there are 2 different PRN's, each airline displayed (but did not allow any changes to) the other airline's leg of the trip. This is different than if I had booked 2 one way trips.
I'm definitely pleased with my Cheapair experience, my first time straying away from airline's sites for a purchase. I've searched Cheapair and Kayak thousands of times, but while Kayak gets revenue on clickthrough's, Cheapair only makes money on purchases. Yes, they charge a $10 booking fee, but Entertainment has easy to use $15 off promo codes that net a $5 savings per ticket (woo hoo
).Cheapair was much quicker and simpler than the oh so slow and clunky websites of both of these airlines. Overall Cheapair was a considerably better customer experience than I have received from either CO or AA.
What Cheapair could improve:
- Allow for custom seat assignment selection at purchase time. Currently, they auto-assign (which they did acceptably well) and then you can log on to Cheapair to make a custom selection (which I did).
- Full disclosure of their $10 booking fee. They build it into the fare, not the fees. It is obvious (and expected) if you comparison shop, but it is not disclosed.
- More proactive session timeout prevention. I was able to navigate away and back to the checkout form multiple times, and my information was always preserved in the form. But after an hour I was surprised it still let me complete and submit the form.
Only after submitting did it give me a session timeout error. I then had to redo the search and reenter all the information. Since the site is so simple this was only a minor interruption, and not unexpected. But it would have been nice to get a timeout popup and for the passenger information I had already entered to have been saved in my profile.
- Safer password protection. I requested password to be emailed, and my password was plainly exposed in an non-encrypted email.
- Because of low password security, I chose not to click "save this credit card info" but it saved it anyway. This should not be.
Last edited by Rut Dog; Oct 17, 2011 at 5:20 pm