abbekit

I would love to hear comments, complaints, praise from anyone who has actually completed a trip using this consolidator to book airline tickets please.

Checking all major ticketing sites including individual airlines this consolidator is $300-400 cheaper for tickets from DFW to Zurich for September. Seems like a good deal but is it risky?

111op

I heard about them here.

I bought NYC to LHR round-trip on Virgin for about $480 from them a few weeks ago. (mid June departure, duration of trip = 1 week)

It seems like a good deal. I keep meaning to call Virgin to see if I'm on their list but I haven't.

P_M

I am also going from Texas to Switzerland this year and when I read your post, I was sure you were mistaken. I did a search using the same criteria, and I'll be darned, flyeurope IS about half the price of Orbitz!! I thought at first flyeurope was displaying a one-way fare, but I priced is out and it is RT.

I have not used flyeurope before, but let me offer one word of caution from a friend of mine who bought tickets from Priceline. Ask what the policy is for cancellations or changes to your itenerary. My friends bought their tickets months in advance from Priceline, but then an emergency happened where they had to come home sooner. They called the airline and they refused to change the dates, as Priceline sold them the tickets. They then talked to Priceline for an hour or more, going through supervisors, etc. Priceline would not budge and said they were stuck with the original dates. In the end, my frineds had to buy one-way tickets on the spot to come home early, costing around $1,800. So the moral of this story is: Find out what the policy is for any type of changes, then decide if you can live with that risk.

111op

I forget exactly, but I think that the consolidator charges a cancelation/change fee. Also, I'm not sure if you can accrue FF miles -- I think not. But considering how difficult it is to redeem FF miles these days, accruing them is not necessarily a high priority for me.

jame

I recently booked a flight from BOS-CDG with 1800flyeurope.com. The cost was also significantly less than any place else (and I had done a lot of checking). I actually ended up booking over the phone because I called the 800 number to find out more about them, and the person I spoke with was so nice and helpful that I just booked the tickets then instead of going back online. The advantage of that was that she confirmed which airline the tickets were on (in this particular case, it wasn't listed on the website).

I got an immediate email confirmation and shortly after, got an e-ticket receipt in the mail. I didn't think I would be able to get frequent flyer miles, but I called American Airlines, partly to make sure the reservations were real(!), and found out that I would get miles after all. I was able to get seat assignments when I made the reservation, which was also nice.

abbekit

I'm not too worried about the FF miles, although that would be nice. However I will carefully read the cancellation rules since my mom is very elderly and not in good health. We recently were on two trips and we almost had to turn around early due to her illness.

The prices on 1800flyeurope seem too good to be true, how do they get the cheap seats? I'm not too familiar with how consolidators work.

If someone has actually already flown with tickets booked through them I would like to hear if it worked out okay.

111op

I'm leaving in about four weeks, so I can't tell you about them just yet. Anyway, this is the first thread where I heard about them --

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34462746

Frommers recommends them, according to someone who responded there, so they can't be too unreliable, I think.

I don't know the ins and outs of consolidators either. I think they must have a contract with the airlines enabling them to resell tickets or whatever. Just because the tickets are cheap doesn't necessarily mean that there's a problem, of course, though I obviously understand your concerns.

Wayne

Though most people on this site understand how consolidators work, I'll offer an abbreviated description hoping to help those who don't yet know. The consolidator typically purchases from the airlines a number of seats/dates, sometimes even including deals with hotel and car included, at a low price. Most of the time the routes, the connections, and the flight times are less convenient. The consolidator then resells the tickets at a profit. What a lot of people don't understand is that most airlines operate with empty seats on many flights, and so they are willing to sell those less desirable seats and times to consolidators rather than get nothing for an empty seat. Airlines keep pretty good statistics on expected plane capacity versus expected traveler traffic, so they know about how many such deeply discounted seats they can sell.

abbekit

Wayne, thanks for the info. I've double checked the flight times and dates we want from 1800flyeurope and they match up with American Airlines so I'm pretty sure that's the carrier. I'm going to go for it.

P_M

Abbekit, I've already booked my tickets this year but I might use flyeurope next year. Did you find out the change/cancellation policy? If so, please fill me in so I can decide whether or not to use flyeurope in the future. Thanks for this post, it will probably save me some money next time I buy tickets.

jame

abbetkit, the flights I booked on 1800flyeurope.com were on American Airlines. I had also guessed that from the schedule, and when I called the 800 number, the woman I spoke with confirmed that. She said they can't always list the airline on the website, but that they will tell you over the phone. Also, after I booked the flights, I was able to go onto the American Airlines website with my confirmation number and see that we really had reservations on the flights, which was reassuring.

ira

Hi all,

Just an interesting observation:

Someone on another post asked about tickets BOS/FCO.

I went to http://airtravelcenter.com/onetrav.htm
for the price and compared it to www.1800flyeurope.com.

In this case 1800flyeurope is $100 more expensive.