<BR>A friend from school is planning on <BR>doing a portion of her grad school <BR>studies in Africa- Madagscar being <BR>first choice. It has been suggested <BR>that it wold be easier and more <BR>affordable to fly to London or <BR>Amsterdam from the Detroit MI area <BR>and then buy her tickets to Africa. I <BR>wondered if anyone has experience <BR>with these European bucket shops <BR>where cheap tickets are sold and what <BR>the advantages and/or risks would be. <BR>Any help would be much appreciated.

"bucket shops" sounds awful, but there are a few that are brilliant - they are well run businesses, so zero "risk". I use these all the time for business travel, but they also do fantastic deals for economy travel - I recently used Trailfinders to go to Miami from London and it only cost £175 return on BA. Try Trailfinders (+44) 020 7938 3366 or Airline Network 0870 241 0030 or Bridge the World 0870 220 0012. Good luck!

Quite a few advertise at www.cheapflights.com but I can not vouch for their trustworthiness. Another is Lastminute.com.

You can find out by looking at their offers on http://www.cheapflights.co.uk. <BR> <BR>Sites for Amsterdam bucket shop air tickets are <BR>http://www.nbbs.nl/ <BR>In Dutch, http://www.vliegtarieven.nl <BR>A company which collects deals of other companies. They specialize in package vacations, but you can sometimes get flights as well. http://www.d-reizen.nl/bucket shop air tickets. <BR> <BR>Ben Haines, London <BR> <BR>

James, <BR>Do you have websites or emails for those 2 bucket shops you mentioned? Would appreciate. Thanks.