I’ve got a nice big backlog of Ask Cranky posts, and I thought this would be a good time to starting clearing that out. Today, we’re talking consolidators.

Can you do a piece on consolidators/consolidator fares? It’s probably the largest aspect of the industry that I’m in the dark about. I’d like to see something with a bit of depth. How do they work? Why do they even exist? At the basic level, I understand that they buy blocks of tickets at a discount. But why can’t the airline just sell them through their own systems with whatever restrictions they want? Are all online agencies consolidators? If not, how can you tell? When are they just fronts for the same thing you can buy directly from the airline? Are there any real differences between Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheaptickets, Cheapoair, and others that I’ve forgotten?

Dan L

Ah yes, consolidators. It’s sort of the mystery of the travel world for many people. They have this reputation as being amazing sources of cheap fares, but how can you find them? Are they reliable? What’s the catch? Let’s get started.

For you as a traveler, when you hear about consolidators, bucket shops, and wholesalers, it means the same thing. Discounted airfare. You’ll have the best luck finding these on international routes, in particular in premium cabins, and you can save a lot of money.

For example, we had a Cranky Concierge client who recently needed to fly from Chicago to Hong Kong in business class. American was showing an option on its website for $9,000 roundtrip. We found those same flights on Webjet.com for a mere $3,500 roundtrip. Yeah, big difference.

There are a couple things to keep in mind about these fares. Yes, you can save a ton but there are nearly always additional restrictions. The change fee on this, for example, is $400 plus a $50 Webjet fee, so it’s not entirely flexible. Any changes are required to go through the agency and not the airline, so that can cause issues while you’re traveling. Often you won’t be able to earn miles on cheap seats like these either.

In this particular case, the deal appears to be that Webjet isn’t even allowed to show the airline name. It simply says “Major Airline.” Of course, it’s easy to figure out since it shows flight numbers and flight times. Not hard to put two and two together.

Often the biggest question about something like this is . . . why? The idea is that airlines can find non-traditional outlets to help sell seats that they wouldn’t have sold otherwise. Go to your nearest Chinatown and you’ll find great deals on flights to China at bucket shops around the area. That’s the best way to reach a large audience that can help fill your airplanes. In many places, this is the way they book travel every time.

With the web, things have become more complicated. Cheap fares are offered to the world as soon as they go online, so you would think that this practice would disappear. But it still continues, likely as a legacy of the past. There are good deals to be found, for sure.

But how do you know if these guys are reputable? It’s a lot easier now in the world of e-tickets. Pay with a credit card and as soon as it’s booked, go directly to the airline to check on your reservation. If all looks good, then you’re set. If not, then you can immediately dispute it with your card.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you aren’t necessarily dealing with a consolidator directly. Consolidators will often sell to travel agents, so you can buy fares through retail agents who get the fares through consolidators and you’ll never know the name.

Some places only sell consolidator fares. If you go to Airfare.com, for example, you’ll see that there are very few options given. That’s because published fares aren’t shown. Others just mingle the fares shown, as you’ll see on a site like Travelocity or Expedia. You wouldn’t know if it was a consolidator fare or not at first blush.

I’ve had good luck with Airfare.com, Webjet.com, Cheapoair, and others in the past. You can also go to a travel agent to do the legwork for you, or to Cranky Concierge, of course. In the end, it’s worth checking out because it can save you a lot.

A distraught reader sent me a note yesterday about a bonus mile offer he received from United, and I thought it was worth sharing with everyone. Take note – always do a search on United.com with and without the code to make sure you’re getting the lowest fare.

This particular deal gives you an increasing number of bonus miles for each roundtrip you fly this Spring up to three total. It looks like it’s targeted at Colorado residents as part of the big brawl between Southwest, Frontier, and United but it can be used by anyone (just enter promo code MPD330). Sounds pretty good, right? Might as well get bonus miles if you’re flying, but be careful. This deal is only good on fares in Q class or higher. So let’s say you want to go from LA to Dulles on some random dates in May. With the promo code, I see this:

You’ll notice that it tells me that “To qualify for the promotion, all selected flights must be promotion-eligble,” but they don’t bother telling you that they are only showing fares that are promotion eligible. If I take away that promo code, guess what I see?

Holy shnikes! That’s over $400 less. Now, if I’m a savvy traveler, I might see at the bottom of the terms and conditions that it’s limited to fares that are in Q or higher, but that doesn’t mean I expect to not be shown lower fares. Many people are likely to miss that restriction anyway. There should be something here that shows the lowest fare without a promotion code so people can evaluate if this is good offer or not.

I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would pay a $400 premium for some bonus miles. For that price, I could just flat-out buy over 10,000 miles directly from United.

So be careful if you’re using a United promo code on their website. Make sure you always do one search with the code and one without so you can ensure that you aren’t missing out on a much better deal.

I’ve run across plenty of problems when it comes to helping our Cranky Concierge clients, but a recent run in with CheapOair.com has me absolutely steaming. It also provides a very valuable lesson: always double check with your airline if you book via an online travel agent.

One of our clients had signed up looking for First or Business class tickets from LA to San Jose, Costa Rica. The lowest rates I had found on most sites were for about $950 roundtrip, a good deal in its own right. But when I went to CheapOair.com, one of the consolidators that I check relatively frequently, I found one that was just over $600 roundtrip on TACA. Was it much lower than elsewhere? Sure. But it wasn’t so insanely low that it seemed completely impossible, like a $10 fare. Besides, CheapOair is a consolidator and can often get lower deals, especially from international carriers.

So, our client booked the trip and the confirmation email confirmed that it was in First. I knew TACA only had Business, but those terms can be used interchangeably by online travel agents for two class airplanes like this. For most people, they would have booked this and been thrilled with the deal. They would have shown up at the airport and been on their way, right? Not so fast.

I always make it a point to double check every reservation made with on online travel agent with the airline directly. Usually it’s just to confirm or request seats, but I always make sure everything got booked properly in the first place. I’ve sent other clients through CheapOair before and never had a problem, but when I checked with TACA, it showed the booking in coach.

Huh? How did that happen? So I called CheapOair and their Indian call center agent assured me that it was booked in First Class. I said that was all well and good but the airline said it was in coach and that meant that they needed to help resolve this problem. They put me on hold.

Sure enough, they came back and said that this flight doesn’t have First or Business so that’s why it was in coach. I told them that wasn’t the case and there absolutely was a premium cabin on this airplane, but the agent refused to believe me. I hung up and figured I’d try again. But first, just to be clear, I called TACA to confirm that there was a premium cabin. There was, and the agent there said that it had been booked with a coach fare.

Round 2 – I called CheapOair back and after going back and forth for several minutes, I was told that I could absolutely get First Class . . . for $1,500 per person. Are you kidding me? I said that our client paid for First Class and expected to get it, but not if it meant nearly tripling the price. This agent went back again and finally came back saying it was a technical glitch and there was nothing she could do. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She came back and said that there was no supervisor to speak with. Great.

We regrouped. I had one person who emailed me awhile ago about blog advertising from CheapOair, so I sent him a note. I didn’t hear back.

I tried to call one more time the next morning and got another agent. This time, he told me that it was the airline’s fault. The airline had failed to file the fare with taxes and fuel surcharges, so it was their fault. Tired of hearing the third different excuse in as many calls, I finally simply gave up and asked for a refund. That was granted. And we just moved on.

The moral of the story? Well, there are two.

1. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is (but not always – there are great deals out there).
2. Always double check with your airline after booking through an online travel agent to make sure everything is in order.

[Update 4/16 @ 1118: Just got a note from CheapOair. They have now offered our client two vouchers for travel on AirTran in consideration for the problems. Now, I have no idea what AirTran has to do with anything here, but hey, it's something. This points back to previous questions about whether a regular traveler would be able to get the same treatment as a blogger. Apparently they can, if they're Cranky Concierge clients!]

ALERT: If you used to follow Cranky at BoardingArea.com, you’ll notice that the blog is no longer there. It was taken down as of Thursday, so you’ll need to make sure you come to CrankyFlier.com to get your fix from now on.

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I’ve long sung the praises of Air Canada’s efforts to create fare product categories, but really, I’ve never gone through the purchase process for my own ticket. When Frontier adopted a similar structure, I felt the same way, but again, I hadn’t gone through the process myself . . . until now. I love it even more.

I have a trip coming up in a couple of months that will take me to both Chicago for a reunion of sorts and then Indianapolis to see the in-laws. The Chicago decision was an easy one – I’ll be on the JetBlue flight from Long Beach. But coming back, I had my pick of the litter. In fact, there were three appealing options, all within about $10 of each other:

1. Frontier Lv Indy 645a Arr Long Beach 1015a (1h7m stop in Denver)
2. Delta Lv Indy 7a Arr LAX 836a (no stops)
3. Delta Lv Indy 815a Arr Long Beach 1209p (1h7m stop in Salt Lake)

While I normally want to fly nonstop whenever I can, I’ll take Long Beach over LAX if the connection isn’t painfully long every time. The choice of Frontier over Delta was an easy one as well. Frontier is new to town, and I always want to support the new guy. We need to fill those planes if we’re going to keep them around. (Besides, I love LiveTV.) So I went to Frontier’s website to book.

Frontier deserves kudos for actually showing the full fare amount instead of the misleading pre-tax amount that other sites show. I saw the fare I expected to see, but then I saw more. In fact, I saw this (click to enlarge):

Hmm, I was going to buy an Economy fare, but for only $30 I could get a Classic fare. What was that again? Oh yeah, they have a link. Here’s the comparison:

It was time to break out the math. What mattered here? Well, I wasn’t checking a bag, but if I was, this became an easy decision to buy up to the higher fare. I was definitely going to pay for LiveTV, though I knew we’d only have it on one of our flights. So that’s a $6 savings. I might think about paying up for Stretch at the time of check-in, but I wasn’t ready to count that yet. Really, it came down to the seat assignment. I wanted that seat assignment in advance. Was it worth $24? Yep, I bought it.

While all this was going on, I had completely blocked the other flights out of my mind. Sure, I could have had an assigned seat on Delta at the cheapest fare level, but I had already made up my mind what I wanted to fly. Frontier was able to get an extra $30 out of me, and I had no problem paying for it. It was completely fair and I expected to get more out of it than the $30 it cost.

I hate when airlines throw fees at you every step of the way, but a product like this allowed me to pay for what I wanted up front and be done with it. I wish everyone would do this.