Booking

Book an air ticket without fighting a booking engine

Booking an air ticket by phone takes about the same time as doing it online, and it is worth doing when the booking engine has already said no, when the itinerary has more than two flights in it, or when something about the passengers is not standard.

What we need from you

Have these ready and the call takes a few minutes:

• Route. Cities are enough — we will advise on which airport.
• Dates, and whether they can move. Flexibility of even one day is frequently worth real money.
• Passengers. How many adults, children and infants.
• Names exactly as printed on the identity document each traveller will fly on. This is the single most common source of expensive mistakes.
• Dates of birth for everyone travelling, which US carriers require.
• Anything unusual. A wheelchair, a pet, an instrument, a minor flying alone, a connection you are nervous about.

When booking by phone is genuinely better

• The website refused the booking. Often an age restriction, a passenger count above nine, an infant on a route the engine will not handle, or a card that keeps failing an address check.
• You need two carriers with no agreement between them. Booking engines will either not show the combination or will show it as two disconnected tickets without telling you what that means for your baggage.
• The itinerary is multi-city or open-jaw. Flying into one city and home from another is usually cheaper than two one-way tickets, but only if it is constructed as one fare.
• You are booking for someone else. Parents booking for adult children, companies booking for staff, families booking for a relative overseas.
• You want the rules explained before you pay, not summarised in a checkbox you tick to proceed.

What you get back

A quote with one number per passenger, covering the base fare, all government taxes and airport charges, any mandatory carrier surcharge and our service fee. Alongside it, in plain language: whether the ticket can be changed, what a change would cost, whether it is refundable, what baggage is included, and whether seats are assigned or allocated at check-in.

We do not publish fares on this site, and there is a reason for that beyond convenience: a ticket agent advertising a price in the United States must show the full total including all taxes and mandatory charges. A "from" price would be misleading and, for us, not permitted. A quote you can actually rely on is more useful anyway.

Paying and receiving the ticket

Payment is taken once you have approved the total. The ticket is issued and you receive the confirmation with the airline record locator and the ticket numbers, which is what lets you manage the booking on the airline's own website if you want to. Check the names on that confirmation the moment it arrives — an error found in the first hours is far cheaper to fix than one found at the airport.

After you have booked

You keep the 24-hour cancellation right that US rules give on bookings made seven or more days before departure. Beyond that, what you can change depends on the fare you hold. If anything goes wrong — a schedule change, a cancellation, a passport that turns out to be expiring sooner than you thought — call the same number. Changing or cancelling a flight covers what it costs.

Common questions