Reliable online agents for long haul flights?

kuepper

I've been looking for flights to a few distant places via flight comparison sites like Skyscanner, Kayak, google flights and Kiwi.com but the online agents they refer you to i've never heard of eg GoToGate. Mytrip,trip.com, getaflight,travelup, carltonleisue, flightcatchers  etc etc

Reviews of all of them seem a bit mixed but I realise ppl tend to only bother giving ratings after a bad experience. Some of the comparison sites rate each agent but they're vague about how they do that. Anyone have suggestions or personal knowledge of any of these agents?

amanda1024

I haven’t heard much good of any of those third party ticket sellers. Generally I’ve found it’s best to buy directly from the airline - so by all means use skyscanner etc to find which flights are best for your destination, dates, times, but then book those flights with the airline

kuepper

amanda1024 said:

I haven’t heard much good of any of those third party ticket sellers. Generally I’ve found it’s best to buy directly from the airline - so by all means use skyscanner etc to find which flights are best for your destination, dates, times, but then book those flights with the airline

Unfortunately where I want to go to has no direct flights to it so 2 airlines are involved so if I miss a connection it could be messy thus daren't risk 2 bookings

eskbanker

kuepper said:

amanda1024 said:

I haven’t heard much good of any of those third party ticket sellers. Generally I’ve found it’s best to buy directly from the airline - so by all means use skyscanner etc to find which flights are best for your destination, dates, times, but then book those flights with the airline

Unfortunately where I want to go to has no direct flights to it so 2 airlines are involved so if I miss a connection it could be messy thus daren't risk 2 bookings

The sites you mention will try to give the impression of creating single bookings but in reality they'll typically be separate ones, even though they may offer some proprietary scheme to link them up.  It would be unusual not to be able to make a fully through-ticketed booking via one of the major airlines though, even if they rely on partner airlines to provide the final leg - where are you going to and from?

kuepper

eskbanker said:

kuepper said:

amanda1024 said:

I haven’t heard much good of any of those third party ticket sellers. Generally I’ve found it’s best to buy directly from the airline - so by all means use skyscanner etc to find which flights are best for your destination, dates, times, but then book those flights with the airline

Unfortunately where I want to go to has no direct flights to it so 2 airlines are involved so if I miss a connection it could be messy thus daren't risk 2 bookings

The sites you mention will try to give the impression of creating single bookings but in reality they'll typically be separate ones, even though they may offer some proprietary scheme to link them up.  It would be unusual not to be able to make a fully through-ticketed booking via one of the major airlines though, even if they rely on partner airlines to provide the final leg - where are you going to and from?

Manchester to Ulaanbaatar, the quickest and cheapest route is via Beijing with Hainan airline and MIAT airline 

lr1277

I am not an expert in this topic but have you considered flying from Europe to UBN? I see MIAT flies from Amsterdam to UBN. Tried to make a dummy booking but then a pop up window appeared about partner airlines.

Apparently partner airlines will help you reach your destination on one ticket. But I didn't get any further.

But MIAT is partnered with BA, KLM, Lufthansa and flies from Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt etc.

MIAT has branch offices in Hong Kong and Frankfurt whom you can email. I would suspect either of those offices will repy to an email in English.

If you can get this parter airline facility to work, you could fly to somewhere like Hong Kong on BA then onto UBN with MIAT?

I personally wouldn't use a TA because I think you will lose S75 protection assuming you pay by credit card. Unless the TA has a rock solid reputation for supporting their customers.

One advantage of making a short hop to Europe then the long haul flight to UBN is the air passenger duty might be less. A number of people on the frequent flyer forums do this even though it means taking a positioning flight to to a European city.

But suggest you contact MIAT by email and ask about the partnership with BA and flying from Manchester.

Edited to add MIAT has a 24hr call centre. You could try that number?

mdann52

lr1277 said:

I personally wouldn't use a TA because I think you will lose S75 protection assuming you pay by credit card. Unless the TA has a rock solid reputation for supporting their customers.

You'd still have S75 protection if the agent did not do their job correctly, assuming it was paid for directly by card

On-the-coast

I’ve flown to a lot of obscure airports on that side of the world.  Agree with comments above. Do your research using something like google flights - learn how to use the search options - including the stopover durations and airline networks. 

Ideally stick with a single airline (or at least one of the big three networks) - so that both flights are ticketed together. 

I usually book with airline - I think google flights gives you that option. 

And, unless you want to build in a day touristing somewhere like Hong Kong, strongly agree with taking a short hop to e.g. Amsterdam & flying the long leg from there. 

Voyager2002

kuepper said:

I've been looking for flights to a few distant places via flight comparison sites like Skyscanner, Kayak, google flights and Kiwi.com but the online agents they refer you to i've never heard of eg GoToGate. Mytrip,trip.com, getaflight,travelup, carltonleisue, flightcatchers  etc etc

Reviews of all of them seem a bit mixed but I realise ppl tend to only bother giving ratings after a bad experience. Some of the comparison sites rate each agent but they're vague about how they do that. Anyone have suggestions or personal knowledge of any of these agents?

I have heard bad things about all of those agents. Note that Kiwi is an agent, not just a search engine.

In terms of reliable agents: I have used Expedia a few times without problems, although I have heard of other people having issues with them. And have heard nothing but good about Trailfinders, although I have not used them for about twenty years.

kuepper

On-the-coast said:

I’ve flown to a lot of obscure airports on that side of the world.  Agree with comments above. Do your research using something like google flights - learn how to use the search options - including the stopover durations and airline networks. 

Ideally stick with a single airline (or at least one of the big three networks) - so that both flights are ticketed together. 

I usually book with airline - I think google flights gives you that option. 

And, unless you want to build in a day touristing somewhere like Hong Kong, strongly agree with taking a short hop to e.g. Amsterdam & flying the long leg from there. 

There's no long hop from AMS it seems, you have a stop in Istanbul and it adds about £500 on the price compared to Hainan/MIAT which should work but I get an error message when I try and book the trip on Hainan website so confidence wanes. Looking like for peace of mind I'll have to go with Turkish that's an extra £500 with long layovers that'll probably mean a hotel too

Alan_Bowen

Trailfinders are fine, but rarely the cheapest. Netflights is part of dnata which in turn is owned by the Emirates Group, so solid protection. Most of the agents that advertise on search engines do so because you would never book with them otherwise, gotogate, kiwi and  mytrip are all based overseas for example, some charge extra to help you when things go wrong (and then don't seem to offer much help either!) so always check to see where the business is really operating from before booking!