Travelrepublic and booking seats together question.

busiscoming2

I am looking at booking a holiday through TR.

The flights are via Avro but I know they are Monach flights. If I go ahead and book will I be able to add the 'sit together' afterwards via the Monach or TR site?

PS: Can this be done later regardless of airline?

bagand96

Why not just book the flights directly with Monarch or Avro to get the options you want?

But, yes, it seems Monarch do allow you to add this even if it's a charter flight through a third party : http://www.monarch.co.uk/faq/flights/seating/pre-allocated-seating-charter

busiscoming2

bagand96 wrote: »

Why not just book the flights directly with Monarch or Avro to get the options you want?

But, yes, it seems Monarch do allow you to add this even if it's a charter flight through a third party : http://www.monarch.co.uk/faq/flights/seating/pre-allocated-seating-charter

It works out much more expensive doing it direct. The base flight price is different for exactly the same flight. I wonder if the agents get a discount from the airlines?

lea2012

Agents such as Travel Republic don't get a discount, if the flight price is cheaper with them then the chances are that you will get a call a day or two after you have booked to advise that the price has gone up and you will be expected to pay the difference in cost. If you don't want to you can get a refund, which will take up to 5 days to come back into your account by which time the Monarch price will probably have gone up again.

I'm all for using an online travel agent to book a hotel, transfers etc but do prefer to book a flight direct with an airline to save money.

PompeyPete

lea2012 wrote: »

I'm all for using an online travel agent to book a hotel, transfers etc but do prefer to book a flight direct with an airline to save money.

+1.
I use accommodation websites a lot, but I'd never use them for flights. One exception being...

https://www.airasiago.com/en-gb/

Which is owned by Air Asia, and you can pick up some excellent flight/accommodation packages.

bagand96

It works out much more expensive doing it direct. The base flight price is different for exactly the same flight. I wonder if the agents get a discount from the airlines?

Generally, as the above posters say, no they don't.

Monarch can be a bit odd though as some of their flights they will sell an allocation to the tour operators, but sell the rest as their own scheduled flight. Therefore in theory a tour operators price could be cheaper than monarchs own site. It's rare though. Did you try Avro's site as well as Monarch?

busiscoming2

bagand96 wrote: »

Generally, as the above posters say, no they don't.

Monarch can be a bit odd though as some of their flights they will sell an allocation to the tour operators, but sell the rest as their own scheduled flight. Therefore in theory a tour operators price could be cheaper than monarchs own site. It's rare though. Did you try Avro's site as well as Monarch?

Yes I did.

Voyager2002

lea2012 wrote: »

Agents such as Travel Republic don't get a discount, if the flight price is cheaper with them then the chances are that you will get a call a day or two after you have booked to advise that the price has gone up and you will be expected to pay the difference in cost. If you don't want to you can get a refund, which will take up to 5 days to come back into your account by which time the Monarch price will probably have gone up again.

I'm all for using an online travel agent to book a hotel, transfers etc but do prefer to book a flight direct with an airline to save money.

In fairness: I have a couple of recent experiences of buying flights through agents for significantly less than the fare offered on the airline's own website. These were for scheduled flights (BA and BMI Regional) so perhaps things are different for charters.

lea2012

Yes scheduled usually is different as they do discount for agents on some occasions, however not always and I would just be wary.