Orbitz is not always what you see
 

I posted on the European board that I had found an open jaw ticket to Europe for $765. That was through Orbitz. It turned out that when trying to book, the price jumped to $840.50 per ticket. This is what I wrote to them:

"What gives? I find a flight for $765 per person NYC-PAR STO-SFO (May 19 to July 16), but when I go to book, it comes out to $1681, which is higher than if I choose a flight listed at $814 per person. What's the hidden fee?"

In Kayak, Cheaptickets lists the same flight for $840. Given a choice, I will choose the provider who gives straightforward prices, although in this instance it is of little importance since Cheaptickets is apparently a sister company to Orbitz.

Orbitz claims that the jump may represent a last minute price change by the airline, but the price has been constant for the last three days with Orbitz and Cheaptickets.

The forums are full of complains on Orbitz and other e-agencies.

So, they replied to your letter? Nice :)

Not defending orbitz here but..

Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia (among others) are BOOKING sites - they may have special fares offered by the airlines, they may not , but they are booking your seats with the airlines as you buy them. Whatever their allotment of low fare seats are, when it's gone it's gone. So it's very possible Orbitz ran out of the special fares before other booking agencies did.

Cheaptickets, on the other had, is essentially a consolidator fro most of their tickets. They buy up low price tickets (often with special deals offered by the airlines to top consolidators) and resell them to consumers. So oyu are buying the actual ticket from them, not just booking with an airline through them. So their tickets are totally separate from what you would book with the other agencies above.

neither is good or bad in and of itself. it's just a different way to buy a ticket. My experience is that with a cheap tickets ticket, IF there is a problem, the airlines are slightly less willing to work with you and it's almost impossible to get seats assigned before the flight. But if there isn't a problem there's not a difference in the actual flight experience.

Another possibility is that it shows the price for 1/first ticket and that may be the last seat at that price, so when you ask for 2 tickets you get a higher total price.

My experience on airline websites and some online travel agents is that if you ask for 1 ticket, it gives you the cheapest price. If you ask for 2 tickets, it will then give you the cheapest fare at which 2 seats are available.

I have before found this and booked one seat at the cheapest price and then a separate booking of a second ticket at the next highest price.

I've also had the experience with Orbitz of clicking on a price and it goes - DOWN. I'd say my up/down experience is probably 3x up to 1x down. The point, though, is that Orbitz is not a perfect system, so you can either accept its limitations, or buy from a site that's perfect. But I have also had the same sort of thing happen on the United.com website also - both up and down.

Final resolution: Both Orbitz and Cheaptickets had a considerable price increase in two days, with new carriers. The original itinerary is no longer available, at least not at a decent price. So I tried Expedia and purchased tickets for the dates and same itinerary for the price originally quoted by Orbitz, but the routing is somewhat different on the way over--its Swissair via Geneva rather than SAS via Copenhagen.

I have seen this problem before and it may have to do with an inventory class associated with a particular fare that appears available until you try to book it. (Try inputting your origin and destination cities in www.seatcounter.com to see all of the possible inventory classes.) For example, Orbitz may quote a coach fare that needs to be booked in W class that has a fare basis code of WJWANGE and it may have certain rules/parameters that the Orbitz software didn't consider until it attempted to "price" the itinerary.

My suggestion is to call the Orbitz (or whatever site) help number and see if they can help you with the booking. If they can't book it for you, they can possibly explain why your itinerary isn't available. If there was an additional restriction, perhaps you could modify your trip slightly to be able to accommodate that restriction.

Hopefully by pointing this out to the person at Orbitz, their software can be improved to avoid this in the future.

misterfuss,

If that is the case, why would the sister company list the correct price?