Trying to book a trip to Madrid in March. Fares currently are terrible (I stupidly waited too long to purchase and am kicking self for it.)

Looking at cheapoair, and it shows a decent fare via British Airways, yet when I tried to look up the same flights on the BA site, they don't exist.

I know one explanation is that what cheapoair displays as British Airways is probably a fare partner airline like AA or Iberia. Seems like the BA site would show it, though? (I know AA, for exg., will list the flights as "operated by XX airlines.&quot

Am I wrong to be concerned? What's the general consensus re cheapoair as far as service and reliablity? Difficulty in getting seat assignments?

BTW - have done a site search, but the *few* replies were from '07 and earlier.

many thanks for the help!

I haven't used them and just remember some problems people had, but it's been a while so maybe those are the posts you found.

Well, I sure would be concerned that they are selling flights that don't exist. It doesn't make sense to think they are partners, as they should be listed under the correct airline when they are selling them, if it is the main long flight. If it's a connection flight (say London to Madrid), it might make more sense but you really do need to be careful of that as I had a problem being sold a BA flight that was a codeshare to SEville and it did not exist, either. It was really Iberia and I got worried as the Iberia website listed a totally different time that the one I had supposedly bought. Well, with good reason, it didn't exist and then the people I bought through tried to change my flights to a completely different time that would give me an 8 hr layover or something. They had claimed in the beginning that there was nothing wrong with the flight info.

Now that wasn't cheapoair, I think it was actually British Airways itself who didn't know what they were doing.

Is it a nonstop from US city to Madrid?

Are the flight #s listed?

I recall reading some poor reviews on cheapoair here in the past, but I'm not 100% sure. Do a search here and see if you could pull up any old threads?

AA currently is having a winter fare sale to Europe. Someone else here booked flights from Miami to London for about $540 round-trip, but of course, it'll be a bit more for Madrid.

Interesting -- in response to your questions, I tried to pull the itinerary up just now and it is no longer listed. Weird.

I have searched for fares through AA but the connections are awful for anything affordable - we live in a smaller city and have to connect through hubs. I'm trying 3 different airports, no good fares yet.

I'm using Kayak.com; found out about cheapoair from a link on that site.

YK -- I have searched Fodors for info already -- only a few responses and the posts were dated 2007 and earlier. Wondering if anyone has dealt with them *recently*.

Unfortunately, a lot of these "discount" 3rd-party sites use the tactic of bait & switch. They advertise very low airfare prices, but when one actually gets down to booking them, they aren't actually bookable. Then these websites will give you an alternative itin for much more than the advertised fare.

I had the same thing happen to me. My flight was from Cleveland to London. I saw a direct flight from BA and when I went to the BA website, I found NOTHING!! With that in mind, I got a different flight. It scared me that it wastn't on the BA website. I'm sure you could call the airline though?

I have used CheapoAir and have run into the same thing. Their explanation was that airlines routinely cancel flights before CheapoAir can update their site. If I were going to use them (which by the way, both my sister's family and I did use them last June) I would call them rather than book online. The agent I spoke with was able to check the CheapoAir flights against the different airlines schedules to confirm whether or not a flight was still scheduled and how many seats were available on the flight. We are flying to Spain in June, and because of their low fares, I will still consider them first.