Flight search engine sites - be careful

Old Oct 13th, 2018, 04:59 AM
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Flight search engine sites - be careful

I’ve been using some flight search engine sites like Skyscanner and Opodo for years.

In their early years, the sites provided flight routings and then click ons to send you directly to the airlines websites to buy the tickets. For some time, the search engines have been sending you to flight consolidators, ticket warehouses and “god knows where”. I’m not sure how much vetting the known search engines complete in realtion their partners.

Twice this week I have been offered good deals to Norway, been redirected to the consolidator and then keyed all my details into their site. As I keyed the final details of my credit card, the price quoted changed by 300%. I was about to press pay when realised that the total price had become the price per passenger. As there were 3 passengers it was confusing, this was a split second before I hit the pay button. (Which I didn’t hit)

I phoned both consolidators, they both said their new business model was to only quote final prices when all details had been keyed in. “Prices change by the second”.

Just be careful with some sites which seem to charge large admin fees for cancelling the tickets when you realise the mistake.
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Old Oct 13th, 2018, 05:14 AM
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Search where you want. but buy only from the airline itself. Easy click makes for easy rip-off.
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Old Oct 13th, 2018, 06:28 AM
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I recommend using ITA - Matrix - ITA Software by Google - as your first stop. ITA has been the "gold standard" in search engines for years. While you can't ticket through ITA, it was acquired by Google a few years ago, and offers click-through functionality to Google Flights. Some of ITA's features - multiple origin and destinations, month long searches, an "advanced routing code" which, while requiring some study, is enormously powerful in stipulating things like airline or alliance preferences, specific routing points (e.g. plane changes in London, not in Paris) and so on - are extremely useful. ITA serves as the "background" engine for numerous airlines and other online services including Oribitz and Kayak.

Ticketing through the airlines is often the cheapest and most reliable means, although the Expedia group - Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz - are also generally reliable, and useful when a given itinerary involves airlines that are not necessarily alliance partners with one another. If you find an itinerary that involves, say, American Airlines to JFK, changing to Alitalia to Rome, you generally won't be able to ticket the trip on either American's or Alitalia's websites, but you can through, say, Expedia, and the PNR - the reservation record - will allow bags to be checked through as if the airlines were partners. (Airlines have reciprocal "interline" agreements even if they're competitors.)
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Old Oct 13th, 2018, 08:13 AM
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>>> Ticketing through the airlines is often the cheapest and most reliable means.
Delta.com sometimes exhibits unreliable behaviors. On many occasions, I have entered all the info and when I click "buy", it would come up with that price no longer available error. Repeating the process and I again got the same price. Click "buy" again, and the price is no longer available message. Wait until next day, it let me buy the same flights at the same price.
Other times, when www.delta.com using a PC refuses to let me buy flights displayed on the screen spitting out "There was an error." But if I use my phone Delta App, it let me buy the exactly same flights. It's like a video game with hidden trap doors.
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Old Oct 13th, 2018, 08:34 AM
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Not quite.

The search engines offer deals and routes that the airlines don’t offer directly.

However, I agree.

This time, I became so annoyed with the process, that we bought direct from Norwegian Airlines but not using our desired departure airport and for £150 more.
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Old Oct 13th, 2018, 08:39 AM
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Greg

Delta are legendary (or not) in our house hold.

Last year we desperately tried to secure our magical route : Manchester UK - ATL - Marsh Harbour, Bahamas. For months the flights for travel during Easter 2018 were £2500 economy. For one day in May 2017, The price pinged up £575 which we paid very quickly.

Delta tried every very trick in the book to reroute, cancel, reschedule, deny, avoid, etc, etc that the tickets existed. We refused to budge and flew without hitches.

Over the years, EVERY time Delta sell us a good deal, they try to subsequently move the tickets.
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