Booking International Flights

[sbryan]

Hi,

I need to book a flight to France in the next few weeks and I was wondering which website I should use. I'm not sure what the process is called, but I know some websites sell non-guaranteed seating, meaning you would be the first to get bumped to a later flight if the flight was overbooked. I would like to avoid non-guaranteed seating. I'm on a tight schedule when I arrive, so I don't believe the risk would be worth the money I save.

What websites should I avoid that sell non-guaranteed seating? Does anybody have a website they've had positive experiences with?

Thanks!

 

[Barry_Green]

Pick an airline and book at their site. Use something like expedia or orbitz to find out what kind of airlines go where you want, but I always book directly on the airline site.

There is no way to be guaranteed to get a seat, that simply doesn't exist. Sounds outrageous, I know, but the simple fact is that the airlines are not obligated to fly you when they say they will. The only way to even come close to having a full guarantee would be to buy first class, or to be a premium member of that particular airline's frequent flyer club.

Getting bumped is not that common, I've flown a hundred thousand miles each of the last several years and I've never been bumped yet (knock on wood) but then again I'm now at the elite level of the frequent flyer program so maybe that has something to do with it.

Typically (at least in the US) they'll call for volunteers for people to give up their seats, and they'll pay the people for that, so while I've been on many flights where that's happened, it's always resulted in people taking the offer and nobody's been bumped against their will that I know of.

Now, going international (especially to a place like Europe) is going to be heavenly compared to traveling domestically. The domestic airlines are hideous, I think even Air India was better run than most US-based airlines. All my experiences on international flights with Qantas, Air New Zealand, Jet (NOT JetBlue, I'm talking about India's "Jet" airline), Air India, Singapore, Malaysia, Lufthansa, and all the other airlines I've flown have been *heavenly* compared to the cattle-call nightmare that is domestic US air travel. A coach-class ticket on Singapore Airlines compares very favorably (probably even better) than first-class on a US airline.

The best thing you can do to arrive on time is to take as direct a flight as you can. If you don't have loyalty to any particular airline, find one that flies directly into the city you're going to, from the city you want to leave, with no stopovers. Stopovers and plane changes are the worst, that's where the delays come in and the missed flights and all the problems. If you're having to change planes domestically, allow a minimum of an hour, preferably 90 minutes from scheduled arrival to scheduled departure. And planes earlier are more likely to be on time than planes later in the day; delays tend to have a cascading effect so the last flight of the day is much more likely to be late than the first flight of the day.

Now, if you're booking through someplace like travel.yahoo.com, lots of times what'll happen is you'll be subcontracting through another airline, so it'll look like you're flying on American, but actually American will have bought and traded seats on a British Airways flight (or something like that). You can actually save a decent amount of money that way once in a while, I did that on my first trip to Australia and got a Qantas seat for several hundred dollars less than Qantas wanted. I don't know if that strategy makes you more likely to be bumped or non-guaranteed, but hey, it's an option.