Flight Search Engines And The Multi-City Ripoff
from the well-look-at-that dept
It's no secret that almost no one who isn't employed by an airline really understands airline pricing, but in playing around with some flight search/booking tools, I recently came across something interesting, suggesting that if you're doing multi-city tours, it may pay to not let a flight search tool know that. I have a bit of travel coming up in the near future that's going to involve a bunch of stops. While I was booking the flights, I noticed some oddities. In pre-planning the trip, I had done some spot checks on pricing for flights between various cities -- plugging them into Expedia to see what came up, just to get a sense of what the cost would be. However, when it came time to book, I did one big "multi-city" list of flights, and was surprised that what came back seemed significantly more expensive than what my mental estimate had been from the spot check. So I went back, and looked what would happen if I booked each leg individually... and the prices went way down -- back to what I had seen with the spot checks. Hmm. In the end, if I had booked the multi-city flights for the exact same flights it would have been more than double the cost than if I booked the flights individually (which I did).I decided to mess around and see if this was true in other situations and on other travel search engines. Because I really don't feel like broadcasting my travel plans/flight times/flight dates/destinations to the world, I tried it again with a made up itinerary, which I used to demonstrate the situation below. I did all of the searches within minutes of each other and went back and redid a few of the searches to make sure that my own searches weren't somehow influencing the pricing (they didn't -- if I went back and did the same searches, I still got the same prices). I will say that on my actual flights, the multi-city price was even higher and the individual flight costs were even lower than with this example that I show, so the spread was even bigger than seen here, though this example still gives a decent spread. First up, here's my example "multi-city" itinerary as per Expedia:
I was curious if other search engines would show the same thing. First up, was Expedia's main competitor in being the "big legacy" player, Travelocity. I haven't used that site in years, and discovered that their interface is incredibly annoying (it also seems to be one of the only flight search engines I can find that doesn't try to autofill airports as you type). Rather than showing the full package upfront, Travelocity makes me pick each flight, so I did -- and picked the exact same flights:
The other thing you might notice is that the final flight on Hipmunk is actually not the same. That's because, when doing the multicity search, Hipmunk doesn't even show that 8pm flight. You can see it if I expand out and it shows the final leg options.
After going through all of this, I reached out to folks at Hipmunk, to see if they could explain the result. Hipmunk's Adam Goldstein kindly explained the basic situation, noting that airlines have all sorts of rules about what tickets can be combined with others. If you've never dealt with the insane details of fare classes (which go way beyond seating classes), you can spend way too much time online reading the crazy details. Given that, it seems that it is these kinds of "fare classes" that are the "culprit" -- and by "culprit" I mean the way in which the airlines force you into spending much, much, much more than you need to.
That said, Goldstein also argues that there are downsides to buying individual flights. He brings up, as we discussed above, the issue of connecting flights (and also having bags checked all the way through to destination) -- but as noted, that doesn't apply in this situation. He also points out that if you have to "change or cancel your whole trip, you have to pay separate change/cancel fees for each booking, instead of one for the whole thing." That's absolutely true, but is that "insurance" worth paying twice as much? I could rebook my entire trip with different times and dates... and basically pay the same total amount. So... that argument doesn't make much sense.
In the end, it really feels like a scammy way of making fliers pay a lot more than they need to, without them realizing it. What I do know, however, is that if you're looking for the best deals, do not assume that a multi-city search will turn up the cheapest prices -- and also recognize that the different search engines can give out extremely different answers. For example, if price was the only concern, and short flight times/non-stop flights were less important, then obviously that British Airways option at the end is by far the best price -- but it turns up on none of the other search engines. However, I'd imagine that most casual fliers have no idea, and I wonder if many people end up booking multi-city flight options, not realizing that they could save a ton by booking the exact same flights individually.
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Filed Under: aggregators, flights, multi-city, rip off, seat pricing, travel booking
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Price discrimination?
I would think that people with more money want the convenience of just booking at one time rather than individual bookings. So we have a system set up to charge what the market will bear in this situation.
The smarter people are those that opt for individual tours and don't go first class on each leg.
Other than that, I can only think that it's a great scam that nets them huge profits for less work. Kind of like copyright.
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Re: Price discrimination?
It's very clear the author neither knows much about how to book smartly (and cheaply) nor that he understands how ticketing works.
First off - his flights span 3 different airline alliances. Not only fare class, but alliance rules and agreements affect the seat availability and the price for those seats.
If the author was more knowledgeable - instead of doing multi-city OR buying separately - he would have done a round trip ticket from hist 1st and last flight. Then bought a separate flight b/n city 1 and 2. You can price this itinerary over $150 cheaper than booking 3 separate flights!!
Likewise, he could have choses flight 1 and 2 as a round trip and flight 3 as a separate ticket.
This is a pure product of ignorance rather than some master plan to scam consumers... Research pays off... No offense to the author - but he didn't do his homework here!
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Re: Re: Price discrimination?
You say buy a round trip ticket for first and last (1 and 3), then buy a separate flight from 1 to 2. He would also need another flight from 2 to 3. In addition, because he is not returning to his origin city, how does he get a round trip for 1 and 3? Right? Or did I get lost somewhere...
Can you explain a bit more, please?
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Re: Re: Price discrimination?
Why should understanding ticketing be any more complicated than "show me every flight and option for each leg of my trip so I can decide the best options for myself"? Can you give a good answer as to why there are all these bizarre rules you need to understand?
You shouldn't need to understand fare classes. You shouldn't need workarounds and hacks to getting the best prices, or even being able to know what flights are available.
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Re: Re: Re: Price discrimination?
so a person who travels airlines needs to get a degree in ticketology to protect themselves AGAINST the airlines ? ? ?
uh huh, that sounds reasonable...
IF 'we' have to go to major levels of research and education to simply buy a freaking airplane ticket at a reasonable price, then the system is obviously set up by default to rip us off...
which -in fact- pretty much describes 90% or our transactions with companies: they ARE trying to rip us off, NOT SIMPLY provide a service/good we need at a fair price, BUT ACTIVELY, CONSTANTLY, EGREGIOUSLY attempting to obfuscate and confuse us TO RIP US OFF...
it ain't by accident, it is done purposefully...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Price discrimination?
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Re: Re: Re: Price discrimination?
However if there is no need to transit or connect same day then multi search is clearly not the best option as the article suggests.
The reason is bit like buying a Ford from a Toyota dealer and then on selling it to a Mazda dealer.
There is no agreement between the existing companies to carry the order and as such a premium is placed on the purchase. If there were an agreement between Scandinavian , KLM and Iberia
then the search would have returned all flights with the same SAS or KLM flight number and fare would have been cheaper than doing it
individually. A good prompt when searching multi's if this happens,then to check the flight numbers carry the same airline code and if not book individually.
I think the OTA's need some java prompt for when this occurs.
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Re:
No thanks. I just took over my whole trip myself after figuring out that she was completely useless.
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Re:
As a travel agent, I face the same situation with several clients who often book complicated itineraries. You need to know and check when it's better to break out the tickets and when it's not...
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Not atypical for shopping search engines.
Despite my expectation of a discount for bundling, it turned out to be cheaper to get individual parts for my recent computer upgrade rather than buy a new one from HP or Lenovo. And this was when shopping at discount places anyway, like Woot and Costco.
I do not believe there are any truly impartial shopping search engines or even ones that make their partiality transparent (such as identifying links to sponsors).
So it only makes sense that a travel agent would create for you a flight itinerary that prioritized cost and commission over price efficiency.
After my recent experiences with travel services, I'm reticent to go anywhere.
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Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
1. If you do have to re-book do to missed flights or change of plans, you would get hit with a separate change fee for each leg.
2. My recollection from doing the separate leg thing in the past we that I couldn't get them to check my bags all the way through.
I was separately buying legs of a contiguous trip. Mike seems to be buying legs with stopovers, so this constraint wouldn't apply to him.
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Re: Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
Even without checked bags, if you forget to pre-print your boarding passes for you other flights you may have to leave the terminal to go check in which means another round of security. You may be able to find someone to check you in in the terminal at customer service or another gate, but that isn't a guarantee.
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Re: Re: Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
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Re: Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
Hey Mike, Danny here makes some good points. You should add something to the story indicating those problems. Perhaps make up a fictitious converstaion you had with a man named Goldstein (that's a more mature sounding name than Danny), and have him bring up those points. Like this: But then (because you are Mike and have to be contrarian) rebut it with something like this:
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Re: Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
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Re: Re: Two other disadvantages of separate leg bookings
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Re:
Or sit. Or breathe.
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Spoiler: The flight search makes presumptions based on your platform and browser as to what prices it should present you. Mac users pay more, for instance.
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Re:
That's going to be increasingly the case as companies compile more data on us. Each of us will get a different price based on previous buying patterns. The upside is that if you only buy when something is on sale, perhaps that's all you'll ever see. They'll know the proper price point to send you to encourage you to buy.
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Re:
It's very clear the author neither knows much about how to book smartly (and cheaply) nor that he understands how ticketing works.
First off - his flights span 3 different airline alliances. Not only fare class, but alliance rules and agreements affect the seat availability and the price for those seats.
If the author was more knowledgeable - instead of doing multi-city OR buying separately - he would have done a round trip ticket from hist 1st and last flight. Then bought a separate flight b/n city 1 and 2. You can price this itinerary over $150 cheaper than booking 3 separate flights!!
Likewise, he could have choses flight 1 and 2 as a round trip and flight 3 as a separate ticket.
So, I really don't think there will be any take down notices here... the dude needs to realize that buying tickets across 3 airline alliances will always be more expensive and will always choose budget-unfriendly fare class seats due to availability and alliance codeshare rules.
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what about ITA?
Google seems to default to business class for 2 of the flights as well.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/view/details?session=42373449-43f1-46e4-8906-c102bb4d5ef0
comes out to around $3400.
Searching individually finds the first flight for $184? wow.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/view/details?session=ab204067-2277-401b-84bd-e79c08daa325
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Re: what about ITA?
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There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
In your multi-city itinerary - you'd notice that all 3 flights are on 3 different airline alliance. Yet the ticket is ticketed to the airline on the first leg. Do you not realize that beyond fare class rules your ticket is also subject to codeshares and seat availability across airlines and alliances?
It is no surprise that due to that - you are only shown an availability for a business class flight bc there is no appropriate fare class compliant codeshare seat availability.
This is basic stuff.
And so is structuring itineraries like yours. What you should try is getting an open jaw ticket and buying a separate ticket for the connecting flight that takes you from city your second city to the third and so on.
I price your
http://www.kayak.com/flights/OSL-BRU/2013-04-23-afternoon/MAD-FCO/2013-04-25-evening - to about $740 - which is cheaper than buying them separately by over $150 bucks... then you can buy your KLM flights.
Your article is really misleading and misinforms folks to book in ways that do not work very well.
A little education & research goes a long way before publishing something like this!
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Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
MAD FCO was 4/29. Which I see for $264 (lowest) searched individually in ITA. Which is umm, $500 less?
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Re: Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
But you are right - there are MUCH cheaper fares there.
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Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
It is no surprise that due to that - you are only shown an availability for a business class flight bc there is no appropriate fare class compliant codeshare seat availability.
Which seems like a point worth highlighting.
This is basic stuff.
I've been talking to people about this for a month now and have yet to meet anyone aware of any of this. You may be a travel expert, so good for you. Do you insult everyone who isn't as brilliant as you on any particular subject?
You honestly could have shared more information in a nice and helpful way and I would have thanked you. But, what the fuck, dude?
And so is structuring itineraries like yours. What you should try is getting an open jaw ticket and buying a separate ticket for the connecting flight that takes you from city your second city to the third and so on.
Note, as stated in the article, the itinerary you see is made up. What I booked in real life is exactly what you suggest, but it seemed off-topic to the point I was making.
(Also note, I don't live in Europe, so clearly there are more flights involved in my actual trip, which actually involves 10 flights. I simplified this down to 3 to show the issue).
http://www.kayak.com/flights/OSL-BRU/2013-04-23-afternoon/MAD-FCO/2013-04-25-evening - to about $740 - which is cheaper than buying them separately by over $150 bucks... then you can buy your KLM flights.
What you see in Kayak now is different from when I took these screenshots 3 weeks ago. Not comparable, so you're not making the point you think you're making.
Your article is really misleading and misinforms folks to book in ways that do not work very well.
I don't think that's true.
A little education & research goes a long way before publishing something like this!
Again... nice way, dick way.
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Re: Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
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Re: Re: Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
It's probably been at least five years since I used Kayak to book any flights, but it seemed to provide links to quite a few sites to comparison shop. What's wrong with it?
These days I usually use Southwest and do book directly on the airline site. Between flying into airports most convenient for me, free bags, and no penalties if you cancel (you get a credit you can use within a year), it's the best airline for me.
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Re: Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
For all of these people that aren't thanking you - the answers are off topic. Your point was well made and I thank you for it.
Ps. I consider myself a very seasoned traveler and I am very savvy with miles and flights generally. That's why I googled and found your article. This was a mega itinerary I had and I tried your suggestion not thinking it would work.
I had to stop and thank you for sharing.
Cheers!
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Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
Basic? Someone that doesn't make a habit of flying and just wants to get from point A to point B as simply and quickly as possible is supposed to know this how?
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Re: There's a Better Way to Book than what you suggest!
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Geek and Poke
http://geek-and-poke.com/2012/07/the-geekpoke-philosophy-special.html
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Round trip from Columbus Int. Airport Ohio to Boston Int. can range from $300 to $500 depending on the year.
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Collusion alert!
That shouldn't matter in the instant case, however, in which only a single flight was being bought from any one airline. So, no single airline had you combining more than one of their tickets. And if they care about tickets purchased with distinct airlines, that boils down to collusion and violates the Sherman Act.
Whatever is going on, it proves the presence of market failure. A properly functioning competitive market that was free of collusion would drive prices down to near marginal cost, and would thus drive the total price for booking the same three actual flights, with corresponding actual costs, towards the same single number. Search engines being programmed to fail to see cheaper options (such as economy vs. business class) under certain conditions would likewise be driven out of the market by competitors that did a better job for the user of finding a cheaper set of tickets.
The observed data indicate that the airlines are colluding with one another, that the search engines are colluding with one another, and even that the search engines are colluding with the airlines (as, for example, for three separate flights with long stayovers in between them a search engine could conceivably price out getting separate tickets, with separate baggage handling and everything, and present that option, and if it's selected buy the tickets from each airline without letting each airline know anything about any other tickets being bought from separate airlines; yet no such search engine is on the market it seems).
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cookies
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Re: cookies
I only know this because I have learned a lot about computers and browsing the Internet, plus I traveled every week for 15 years for work. I could more easily "see" all the flights online rather than listen to a travel agent give me their limited selection of flights. So, I started looking for flights myself (especially non-stops) and just told the travel agents the flights I wanted.
Knowledge is power, as with many, many other things in life, it is important to learn as much as you can and not necessarily rely on the "experts" that you trust to pull the wool over your eyes.
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Really Nice Article, Mike
K - I do agree with Mike. Your use of terms like "open jaw" and "codeshare seat availability" show that you're a pro or a really knowledgeable amateur and can really add to the conversation. Mike clearly did a ton of work here - You say there's a better way? What is it?
Thanks,
Perry
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And the airlines are the ones making the extra cash, not us.
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Solution: Act like you didn't know, don't bring it up. Grumble if someone tells you you'll need to go out and back again. Then at your stop-over ask at the transfer desk first of all. If you have time, you can even try backing off and trying check-in with someone else. (Only really works at really busy airports where they have a kiosk style system and don't start acting suspicious... Yeah, okay, those don't exist anymore.)
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Re:
Whenever I go to a check-in desk I pull out all the forms and point out, here is my fight now, but look I am catching this other airline flight a couple of hours later.
Sure enough she taps into her keyboard the new details where then the baggage labels get printed out showing their routing to my final destination.
Only some budget airlines can be a bitch because they have no luggage transfer system meaning you need collect the luggage yourself on arrival and to manually check the luggage in for the next flight.
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Interesting
Example
Dublin-Milan-Munich-Dublin
1st and last flight with Ryanair were 30 euros each whereas the middle flight, which was the shortest, wasn't on their route and was 150 euro with Aitalia.
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CrAzY FlIgHtS
What I discovered is that by flying from anywhere to anywhere within possible travel plans the lowest fire ALWAYS wanted you to exchange flights at one destination.
So you aim to book a flight between A to B but it tells you the cheapest flight is through C. The change over times are not good so lets trying booking the flight from A to C where then I can then book C to B next. No such luck when the A to C flight now costs more and cheapest flight from A to C now passes through a new D.
This makes no damned sense and no matter my many tests all over Europe and Asia the results were always the same in that the cheapest flight always had one stop over. Try to book either half of that leg and the price shoots up now making it not the cheapest option.
This makes trying to book an efficient trip near damned impossible when either you can do A to B through C or bad times or you are flying all over the place trying to find some acceptable times.
General advice I have heard is to always delete your cookies when otherwise they know you are busy seeking a flight and they jack up prices as a result.
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Everbread's Haystack Solution
I just checked your request at our Haystack system on everbread.com/demo and we found a split ticket with lower price. However, we do not have all European lowcosts data as well - you know Ryan Air is sensitive on keeping the data to themselves.
1,069 USD on 2 tickets
550 USD
[1] 04/20 12:20 OSL 04/20 13:30 CPH [SK 1467] COS:[B], CABIN:E 737
[1] 04/20 15:40 CPH 04/20 17:10 BRU [SK 1593] COS:[B], CABIN:E M80
Point of Sale: US Channel: Amadeus
Total: 550 USD Base: 423 USD Taxes: 127.29 USD
Fares - ADT
SK OSL-BRU [BNOOWY] [DI:T] 2,436 NOK [PUB] CABIN:E
519 USD
[2] 04/22 07:00 AMS 04/22 09:10 BCN [VY 8318] COS:[T], CABIN:E 32S
[3] 04/26 07:00 MAD 04/26 08:55 CDG [VY 8200] COS:[Q], CABIN:E 32S
[3] 04/26 15:30 ORY 04/26 17:30 FCO [VY 6254] COS:[K], CABIN:E 32S
Point of Sale: US Channel: Amadeus
Total: 519 USD Base: 345 USD Taxes: 173.53 USD
Fares - ADT
VY AMS-BCN [TOWVY] [DI:F] 65 EUR [PUB] CABIN:E
VY MAD-PAR [QOWVY] [DI:F] 11 EUR [PUB] CABIN:E
VY PAR-ROM [KOWVY] [DI:F] 189 EUR [PUB] CABIN:E
https://www.everbread.com/demo/results/OSL-BRU-AMS-BCN-MAD-FCO/JkCqqP
Feel free to register for our demo at http://www.everbread.com/demo or contact me at paleksandrov@everbread.com for any related discussion.
Regards,
Plamen Alexandrov
@ Everbread PST Ltd
Singapore
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Re: Everbread's Haystack Solution
739 USD on 3 tickets
315 USD
[1] 04/23 06:35 OSL 04/23 08:50 BRU [SN 2288] COS:[V], CABIN:E ARJ
Point of Sale: US Channel: Amadeus
Total: 315 USD Base: 239 USD Taxes: 76.21 USD
165 USD
[2] 04/25 07:00 AMS 04/25 09:10 BCN [VY 8318] COS:[X], CABIN:E 32S
Point of Sale: US Channel: Amadeus
Total: 165 USD Base: 115 USD Taxes: 49.55 USD
259 USD
[3] 04/29 06:30 MAD 04/29 08:45 BRU [SN 3732] COS:[S], CABIN:E 32S
[3] 04/29 20:35 BRU 04/29 22:40 FCO [SN 3187] COS:[S], CABIN:E 32S
Point of Sale: US Channel: Amadeus
Total: 259 USD Base: 129 USD Taxes: 130.29 USD
Anyway, feel free to contact me if you find our product interesting.
Regards,
Plamen
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book online, get?
If you know enough and have the time to burn, then you can work around these rules to your benefit. But booking online is your choice and it comes at the cost that the websites and airlines set (they're not charities)
You could also use an agent that does know all this - if the first one is useless or can't find you a decent price or at least explain the cost, find another. Travel agents, like doctors, accountants, lawyers etc are experts that have invested their time so that you don't have to and are due their pay just as any other professional.
So sure you can go online and try to do it (self diagnosis/taxes...) on your own - but you'll not guaranteed to get it right. If your not willing to pay more, you must be willing to pay with time. Airlines aren't going to get better until people get smarter and stop buying these tickets, but there is too many people willing to go online and blindly buy what they are selling. I guess I'd rather know that some of my $ ends up in my agent's pocket than more into some websites coffers...
Maybe the bigger question is why people think they should be able to find/do everything online better? Why do we think we should be able to get it better on our own so easily?
Ps - the software that Expedia. Google and many others use are ALL from the same place - iata software. So its all the same everywhere online in the end... check them out if you don't believe it.
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Baggage
It looks to me like the itinerary is spread out over multiple days such that the traveler would not want to check luggage thru to the final destination. It looks like S/He is staying one night in each of the intermediate cities.
Checking thru to the final destination doesn't apply as a risk here, right?
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Habib didn't read the article.
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Online Travel
Heathrow Transfers And Packages Provide Services of Taxi, Airport Transfers, Heathrow Taxi,
Cheap Cap, Heathrow To Gatwick Transfer, Gatwick to heathrow Transfers,
Cheap Taxi To Heathrow.
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Low cost
Vueling from AMS to BCN
and Vueling from MAD to BCN, the cost including all extras would most probably be below USD 400.-
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Multi city
I have completed numerous searches for various flights and here is what I found.
YYZ (Toronto) to MNL (Manila)Jan. 14, 2015
HKG (Hong Kong) to YYZ March 13, 2015
Total cost Canadian $1513.00 Philippine Airlines.
Now I searched for my multiple.
YYZ - MNL Jan 14, 2015
MNL - BKK (Bangkok) Feb 6/15
BKK - HKG Feb 27/15
HKG - YYZ March 13/15
Total cost Canadian $1630.00 A difference of $117.00 I know flights are cheap with Air Asia but I can't get the two other flights for 117.00. So therefore I disagree with your article. Going multiple in this instance works.
The best time to book an international trip is 124 days before you go.
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travel
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For instance, last year I booked a one way flight from the US to UK but found that I could book two separate flights US-Sweden (stay one day) Sweden-UK and it ended up saving me $200, take into account a hotel in Sweden so it all ran out even except I got to see Sweden.
However, Multi-city does work out in some instances. I'm looking into a flight for the summer UK-US and back. I'm travelling within the US too so my arrival and departure airport doesn't have to be the same. I found a flight for 1100 USD return with multi city where two one way tickets would have cost me the double.
I think the end lesson of it all is that one has to play around with search engines and different flight pattern in order to find the best deal. Who knows how the system actually works.
Anyway, thanks for a good read and happy travelling everyone!
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It's simple
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most cheap
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Absolutely Agree
PS: DO NOT BUY A MULTI-TRIP!!
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Nice
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Most of the people do what you have suggest here
Well! my personal advice is to check the different website before you book a ticket for yourself, sometimes you're lucky to attain special discount and sometimes you paid more money for the same flight which is less costly to another website.It's totally up to you how you use these search engines to get cheap flight tickets.
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Avail The Best Offers From The United Airlines Reservations
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