I posted this elsewhere, but I'm wondering if I am booking an international flight on two different airlines to two different cities, is it risky using Orbitz or another online site? I usually book directly with the airlines, but that doesn't seem to work in this case, since the flights are not with partner airlines.

Or should I just pay a travel agent the commission and get better protection/service?

Orbitz is just an agent. Whether it's better or worse than a brick-and-mortar one... that depends on how good or bad that agent is.

Am I missing something here? The Orbitz combo of flights that I was considering showed up at around $1400+. When I start to actually book the flight, it says that the fare is no longer available. Now it is almost $3500???? I can understand some increase, but it's been like that for a few days. How ridiculous....!

It is common for all agents - online or otherwise.

It's a limitation of the current booking engines. It's not a scam and it's not ridiculous.

If it's not bookable, it's not bookable. Waiting and waiting most likely will not change anything.

I don't follow you. When you put in the information--dates and itinerary, it gives you the airline combination and a price as one of the selections. Then when you actually try to book the ticket, the price more than doubles. It doesn't say that the tickets are not bookable. It offers many options as though they exist.

The easiest way to understand this:
When you search for schedule/fares, the system looks at the latest info available to it. This may or may not be the actual current inventory that the carrier is offering. When you have reviewed and chosen an itinerary and proceed to booking, the system has to now verify with the carrier's current inventory which may have changed since the time the one you searched.

All of the agents use one of the large global booking systems to issue tickets. Unfortunately, a lot of times the airline will upload a particular <b>fare</b> into the system, but not <b>inventory</b> in that fare class.

Only a much higher fare class has inventory, so that's what you get when actually try to book.

A couple of winters ago, I was looking for a China Airlines fare from Houston to Hong Kong. Every online site, including Orbitz, showed that fare, but it was never available from any of those sites. Same situation.

Do not expect they'll load inventory. You're just wasting your time.

I'd look up the fares on itasoftware.com, and then see if they offer you a different agent to go through (like expedia, travelocity, vayama, etc.)

I don't think itasoftware offers any agents does it? It's just a flight search with only the airlines listed.

jag - If you post your itinerary/dates you might get better advice.

You can't book with itasoftware.com. And Orbitz uses their engine, so a fare that comes up on itasoftware.com will likely appear on Orbitz.

Still, it doesn't book it is always bookable.

Yes, but if you search in itasoftware, it can direct you to where it finds the fare. Sometimes it's orbitz, etc.

Greendragon - Do you have a link to itasoftware that shows that? I've never come across it.

You know, now that I go to it, it doesn't - must be another search engine I'm thinking of

Sorry

I think it is Kayak that has a link under every result showing the origin of fares. When you click on the link it opens a new window.