johnvegan

Have you hear about bucket shop ?

NoFlyZone

Many here have. What do you need to know?

johnvegan

Is it right i have heard that from buying a air ticket from bucket shops saves your money ?
And also want to know what are the advantages and disadvantages ?

NoFlyZone

Yes, bucket shop (aka consolidator, wholesale, tour operator) tickets are often cheaper than published-price tickets and have various other advantages and disadvantages which vary by airline and actual ticket provisions.

Advantages include, but are not limited to, the lower price.

Disadvantages include, but are not limited to, they are not always available even with seats available, travel is restricted to certain flights, low priority in the event of flight cancellations or other problems, low or no seating choice until the day of the flight, baggage restrictions, limited change flexibility, expensive penalties, airline cannot make changes only the issuer can, and so on.

qwovadis

airbrokers.com airtreks.com airawards.com

3 good online folks for deals.

www.kayak.com/buzz good screening site for the majors

Used to be u could save a tonne

these days not so much... Round The Worlds most savings usally

Jeff_Costa_Rica

I still think of "bucket shop" in its original sense as a British term for a storefront travel agency that acts as a consolidator and specializes in discount airfares to exotic places. There were always several of them in the Earls Court neighborhood of London. (Maybe there still are.) You'd go to these places and they could fix you up with reasonable airfares anywhere but especially to Asia. It might have been on some Eastern European airline with a connection in Moscow or Bucharest. This was all pre-Internet, but one of the largest of these, Trailfinders, I know is still around.

Things have moved way beyond that these days.

johnvegan

Thanks for your great info friends.

Surfergirl

I think of the term as Jeff above does. In fact, I first heard of the term when I was living in London and working for a travel agency that acted as a "bucket shop" -- at the time mostly selling tickets to Karachi, but also discount tickets to the States.

Until the internet, once back in the States, we used what Americans generally referred to as consolidators -- Cheap Tickets was one such outfit -- found most of them in the L.A. Times classified. Now, with the internet, most of my friends use Kayak. I still like sticking with the airlines themselves to see if I can get a better deal.

DonTopaz

In the States, before the Internet, you'd find bucket shops by looking in the Sunday newspaper travel sections for tiny advertisements that just listed city after city with an air fare price. Some of the places had good reputations, others not so much.

Today, when you purchase tickets on the web, you are almost always purchasing from the airlines regular inventory (whether you purchase directly from the airlines or through a Kayak-type portal). However, there do exist several consolidators who buy space in bulk at discount from airlines and then resell those seats. Those consolidators (or the great majority of them, at least) work only with travel agents, so you as a consumer would have to go through a travel agent to have access to those seats. But before you get your hopes up too high, consolidator seats tend to be available on only a small percentage of flights. Most consolidators also offer special fares for students, people flying to cruises, and "humanitarian" fares -- these fares are also available only on a small percentage of flights, and you absolutely need documentation to use the fares.

Don