ericontheweb

wondering what is better for a airline fare? The travel sites (priceline etc..) all promise the lowest price but their prices are all equal to each other and equal to the airline sites. Who to go to for a really good deal?

sfo

All things considered, if the fare is pretty equal I always go for the airline. When things fall apart, it is easier to work with the airline than a faceless, useless third party.

tom911

If you book through a non-airline site, the airline may charge you a fee to make changes to your reservation if you call them directly. AA, for instance, charges an external reservation fee if you call for things as simple as a seat change on a booking made from outside AA.
http://www.aa.com/i18n/agency/Bookin...ternal_fee.jsp

I-flybynight

I agree 100% go with the airline site, unless of course the price is lower.

lo2e

And I would add that it needs to be significantly lower, I usually shoot for at least about a 10-15% difference to make any potential hassles worth the savings.

B1

Like everything else, it depends. Some airlines handle their sites well and some not so well. My worst experience was with LH when I needed to change a flight that was booked through their site. Northwest (now Delta), Continental, Air Canada, and of course, Southwest, have been good. I'm neutral on United. I suppose there should be a poll because one person's experience doesn't give statistics. Any booking I've done with Expedia has been fine and my credit card's travel agency has been excellent. I prefer the airline's site if the flights are available through them. Sometimes the best routings seem to appear on Expedia.

Jericho-79

Ditto for Expedia. I've never had a problem with them. I've been booking through Expedia since 2003. I don't like how airlines handle their websites- unless it's Southwest.

Here's a plus- Expedia lets you choose your seat for flights that will allow you to.

holtju2

Don't really understand why people like to book on airline websites? Usually the websites are horrible. Unless they offer 10% to 20% discount code or I have ecert to use I rather go to Expedia et all.

meFIRST

That is true, in almost all cases except, in my experience

Some flights are not loaded to the GDS (thus not purchasable from expedia, orbitz). Usually overseas carriers

A good example is TAM and TAM Mercosur (the paraguayan counterpart)
There are some flights ex GRU that do not appear on the the GDS (thus you won't find it on expedia)The Tam flights (JJ) are loaded ,but it appears that some. Tam Mercosur flights (PZ) are not. Meanwhile, it is available for sale via Tam reservations and the Tam website. A search on expedia doesn't always yield all available flights.

In Malaysia - not all Mas Wings, Firefly flights are loaded. But you can buy it from the MH website. You won't find it on Orbitz, expedia or the like.

Ticketed on air line ticket stock
If you buy a ticket directly from the airline website, it becomes a ticket belonging to the airline - presumably this is easier to change. You won't have deal with "contact your travel agent" problem.
I can just contact the airline directly to make changes, at the airport, no fuss.

Access to on line features & on line checkin
I much prefer to book SQ tickets directly on from their website. SQ hardly discounts anyway. The reason : you can specify book the cook preferences (from the drop down menu) , directly from the SQ website.It saves me a call to their indian call center. Half the time, I can't understand what they are saying.

If you book via Expedia - the menu choices for the book the cook, etc are grayed, you have to call SQ reservations directly. It seems that these days even PPS get directed to that Indian call center.

However, or most US based travel - I don't think there is much of a difference. Except maybe, WN?

wise2u

The main travel sites charged a booking fee until recently, so i usually did air only booking at the airlines site. As mentioned it helps if things go wrong too.
There are exceptions as in cosolidators who often buy seats during sales that are no longer available. They can offer substantial discounts on the flight, but usually pair it with hotel and or car for a good priced package deal. I have found that some have better hotel alone prices than the hotel sites themselves and use them to get price match from the hotel. I use vacationexpress for mexico and some Caribbean destinations as they usually have the best prices from ATL as well as a few other departure cities. They saved me 30% on a RIU palace in Mexico last Dec. I got RIU to match it (after many e-mails and screenshots) and RIU threw in free transfers on top of it. It depends on your city as to which company is best, for ATL... apple, funjet, gogo and others are usually too high, but they do have better rates for some cities. We did use funjet one year to CUN and our return was cancelled due to a blizzard in DEN....seems the crew for our flight was stuck there. the company had a rep there who set us up in a cheap (the worst hilton in the world) cheap hotel for the night and got us rescheduled for the next day. Funjet or vacation express (cant remember which) also had their own line in CUN airport so instead of waiting in DL line with 100+ people us and our luggage were breezed through. That was a big +

Aliquot

???? I book through third party sites all the time and never have been charged a fee for changing seats/milage numbers/adding lap children ect....
The only time they charge a fee is if you decide to change your ticket before you are checked in for the first leg.

meFIRST

Only AA does this. Everyone else has more sense

Aliquot

I just changed seats on AA.com for a flight I bought on Orbitz. I then called AA to add my AS milage number (for some reason Orbitz gave them my United number). No charge for either trasaction. Did I just get lucky? Or does the charge not apply for these transactions?

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

Hmm... I've made bookings on Expedia and changed seats on AA's site afterwards and didn't get charged any fees.

My main complaint about Expedia is a small one. The name of the reservation in the "My Reservations" tab is not changeable, or that you can't use promo codes.

flyr16

Further to this discussion:

We need four tkts on an AeroMexico flight. The price difference between the AM website and travelocity/expedia/orbitz is $100 per ticket. Its an intra-Mexico flight. The total cost of the tkt on the 3d party sites is only $100 and change.

Thus, other than the refund policy (I can get a refund with with a per tkt charge from AM if our plans change), is there some reason I shouldn't simply purchase the tkt with travelocity, or one of the other sites? Are any of the three preferred?

Ordinarily, I too will always defer to the airline site. Yet, here, even if we lose out on the entire cost of the tkt bought on the 3d party site, we are still almost at the same place as if we would have bought the more expensive tkts on AM.

We don't want to get stranded in MEX with an invalid tkt yet, that I imagine that is exceedingly unlikely if we go via orbitz, or the like? Perhaps we would get bumped quicker if the flt is full? Anything else that I am missing in the analysis? Thanks.