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The last time I went to FL to visit the relatives, I noticed there was a charge from priceline. What's stopping me from finding a flight on priceline and then just calling up the airline to make a reservation?
Nothing, plenty of folks do it all the time. Sites like priceline just scour for lowest fares, and people generally think that they can get a better deal online versus dealing directly with the airline....sometimes it works out, sometimes it's more expensive.
Check all sources - sometimes you get a great deal with fare aggregator and travel metasearch engine like Kayak, or others - sometimes with the airline direct.
The last time I went to FL to visit the relatives, I noticed there was a charge from priceline. What's stopping me from finding a flight on priceline and then just calling up the airline to make a reservation?
Hell, don't even call. Just go on their website and purchase it that way.
The last time I went to FL to visit the relatives, I noticed there was a charge from priceline. What's stopping me from finding a flight on priceline and then just calling up the airline to make a reservation?
Nothing, in fact it should be standard practice. The general consensus for years here was to ALWAYS skip booking airline tickets with these 3rd party sights. You pay more and lose control of your itinerary if things go wrong using these 3rd party sites.
The preferred method is to use an airfare search engine (there are probably better ones than priceline) and book directly through the airlines website.
Google Flights (and its geekier sibling ITA Matrix) are generally good metasearch engines for airline pricing, and they'll give you useful information like fare rules to understand how the airline builds and prices a given ticket. You then take your search results and recreate it on the airline's web site.
1. Sometimes the online travel agency (Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) will still have access to deep discount or consolidator fares not available directly from the airline.
2. The typical airfare search engine does cache a fair amount of data in the name of returning quicker results to you. Sometimes it will show you a ticket type that actually sold out 30 minutes ago and when you go to book, you're shown a higher price.It's an attempt at greater computing efficiency and not a scam.
If you CALL the airline, you'll be paying an extra fee. Book online only.
Personally, I never use 3rd party sites for booking. If a flight cancelled, delayed or whatever, i don't want to deal with the 3rd party to fix my situation. I've never found that the savings is significant enough to justify the possible hassle
Those sites are GREAT for searching flights (except SWA which does not participate.)
Google Flights (and its geekier sibling ITA Matrix) are generally good metasearch engines for airline pricing, and they'll give you useful information like fare rules to understand how the airline builds and prices a given ticket. You then take your search results and recreate it on the airline's web site.
1. Sometimes the online travel agency (Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) will still have access to deep discount or consolidator fares not available directly from the airline.
2. The typical airfare search engine does cache a fair amount of data in the name of returning quicker results to you. Sometimes it will show you a ticket type that actually sold out 30 minutes ago and when you go to book, you're shown a higher price.It's an attempt at greater computing efficiency and not a scam.
I found this for the first time ever trying to help my brother book a flight recently. Expedia was actually cheaper than the lowest price ticket on the airline's website. I will definitely check both from now on.
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