How to fly cheap: Top-7 air ticket aggregators

 

In fact, in practice, air ticket aggregators turn out to be far from being an analogue of, for example, booking services for hotels, which allow you to save money, sometimes quite significantly. They can even inflate the cost of tickets, and significantly. We decided to test in practice where it is still more profitable to book by simulating the choice of tickets to various destinations and comparing the prices offered by the aggregator with the prices on the websites of air carriers.

 

 

1. Momondo (http://www.momondo.ua). This aggregator appears one of the first in Google search results for queries like “air tickets.” We chose to search for a flight from Kyiv to London at the end of mid-October this year. The most convenient and profitable options are Wizz Air and UIA – 1058 and 2011 UAH. however, without transfers. We keep these numbers with us, go to the sites ourselves, and on the same date we get 799 and 1612 UAH. e. Quite a significant difference, especially if you are going to buy tickets from both sides at once. Searching for other dates and countries gives similar results.

 

 

2. Aviasales(https://www.aviasales.ru). It is also a fairly well-known aggregator, mainly due to the advertising of the translation studio “Courage Bambay”. J We are still looking for the same notorious flight to London. The results are also interesting – the same Wizz Air and UIA, but at a slightly different price, 959 and 1619 UAH. respectively. As you can see, the markup on UIA tickets is quite meager. The aggregator also offered another suitable flight from British Airways for UAH 1,879. On the airline’s website, tickets for the same day cost $50 (at the current exchange rate this is approximately 1,296 UAH). As you can see, the difference in price for tickets from different airlines is significantly different – from several hryvnia to several hundred. For the purity of the experiment, tickets to Hamburg were also checked – on the aggregator’s website they cost 853 UAH, on the website of the carrier company (Wizz Air again) – 719 UAH.

 

 

3. Skyscanner(https://www.skyscanner.com.ua ). The service positions itself as a search engine for air tickets. This time, the search results for tickets are more pleasing with prices – there is practically no difference with the websites of Ukrainian airlines, or it is negligible. But there is still a difference with British Airways – the cost here is 1896 UAH. (versus 1296 on the carrier’s website). For comparison, we looked for tickets to Warsaw for the same period, and the results were surprising again – there was no difference in price with Wizz Air and UIA, but tickets from the Polish carrier LOT on Skyscanner turned out to be slightly cheaper – 3053 versus 3098 UAH. Therefore, the conclusion is ambiguous – you need to look at specific destinations and compare prices.

 

 

4. Anywayanyday (https://www.anywayanyday.com). For some reason, one of the very first and most famous airline ticket search engines “does not see” Wizz Air, but UIA offers tickets for 2,416 UAH. (instead of 1612). British Airways will cost even more – 2646 UAH. (what caused the two-fold difference in price remains a mystery to us; it’s still the same ticket to economy class). Just for fun, we are also checking the Kyiv-Warsaw flight. A ticket for it from LOT can be purchased for 3262 UAH. Again the difference is more than 200 UAH!

 

 

5. OneTwoTrip (https://www.onetwotrip.com). This is a mixture of an aggregator and a booking service, since it also offers hotel reservations (both along with air tickets and as a separate option). Unfortunately, the stated function of finding the cheapest options does not justify itself – we are offered to fly to London with a transfer via Paris (which will extend the trip by 3 hours) by Air France for 1953 UAH. On the airline’s website this ticket costs $73, that is, 1891 UAH. Wizz Air also does not include this aggregator in its results, and UIA tickets for this flight cost 2,380 UAH. Let’s quickly compare the cost of tickets, for example, to Lisbon. 5658 UAH on OneTwoTrip, 5,028 – on the UIA website.

 

 

6. Airtickets24 (http://www.airtickets24.com). Again, without Wizz Air in the search, the option from Air France with a transfer turns out to be supposedly the cheapest (1887 UAH), UIA tickets – 2397. For some flights, for example, Kiev-Bratislava, Kiev-Copenhagen, the aggregator simply does not find direct flights (although Low-cost airlines have them). They offer to fly to Budapest for 1,693 UAH. UIA. The air carrier itself estimates this ticket at 1,403 UAH.

 

 

7. Tickets.ua (https://avia.tickets.ua). From the first time we were offered to fly to London exclusively with transfers and not cheaper than 4337 UAH. (KLM Royal – Royal Danish Airlines). Seriously? But a second search turned up a low-cost flight from Wizz Air (1,015 UAH versus 799 UAH on the carrier’s website) and UIA (2,828 versus 1,612 UAH). I wonder what the markup depends on? But finding tickets to Budapest turned out to be easier – the aggregator did find low-cost Wizz Air tickets for 1,087 UAH. supposedly at a discount. On the carrier’s website they cost 869 UAH.

 

 

In addition, aggregators have the following disadvantages:

 

• their system does not include airlines that are not connected to global air ticket reservation systems;
• airlines have promotional offers, but such tickets are offered only on their own websites;
• It can be difficult to assess the terms of the tariff, since detailed information is not available on some websites. For example, to find out which piece of baggage is included in the ticket price, you need to call the airline or carefully read the conditions on its website.

 

It is also worth noting that ticket prices (both on aggregators and on carriers’ websites) may change. On aggregators – even by a few hryvnia every day, and carriers change ticket prices according to well-known principles – the closer to the flight date, the more expensive the ticket can be.