When it comes to booking flights, here’s why going direct with the airline almost always beats using an online travel agency.
When you’re buying an airline ticket with cash, should you book directly with the airline or through an online travel agency like Expedia or Orbitz?
First, you should know the price of your flight and the points and elite credit you earn are the same, no matter your choice. That is, fares are generally identical whether you book direct or through a mainstream OTA. And your frequent flyer earnings are usually unaffected (with rare exceptions—JetBlue TrueBlue, for instance, awards fewer points for third-party bookings). So if the price and the points are the same, what’s the difference?
The difference is what happens when things go wrong. And things go wrong a lot: schedule changes, cancellations, irregular operations, the need to swap a flight, to name a few. If you booked through an OTA, you can end up in a maddening loop where the airline tells you to call the travel agency, and the travel agency tells you to call the airline. I’ve been there. It’s infuriating.
Making matters worse, most OTAs have terrible phone customer service—outsourced call centers with minimal training. Meanwhile, many U.S. airlines now offer flexible tickets where you can cancel and apply a credit toward a future flight. Handling that directly with the airline is vastly simpler than routing it through a middleman. And when it comes to selecting seats, entering your frequent flyer number, or managing your booking online, the airline’s own website is almost always more capable.
So why would anyone book through an OTA? There are a few niche situations where it makes sense. OTAs often have more flexible 24-hour cancellation policies—some will let you cancel within 24 hours even for same-day bookings, which airlines won’t always do. If you’re booking with a small or unfamiliar airline, an OTA’s interface may be easier to navigate and less prone to payment errors. In some cases, airlines even require you to present the credit card used at booking—a headache that doesn’t apply with OTAs. And OTAs can sometimes book itineraries involving interline agreements between airlines that you couldn’t piece together on any single airline’s website.
There’s also a third option many people overlook: a real, human travel agent who specializes in airfare. Not every agent does this, and you don’t want to book air with just anyone. But the ones who specialize in it are among the savviest people in the business. They’ll monitor your itinerary, jump in during irregular operations, and know tricks the rest of us don’t. There’s usually a booking fee, but for complex itineraries, the value is real.
Twist’s Take: Use sites like Google Flights to research fares and schedules, then book directly with the airline; it’ll save you a world of pain if anything goes wrong. The one exception? For complicated multi-airline itineraries, a travel agent who specializes in air can be worth every penny of the booking fee.