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World Airline Travel Facility
Air Travel Center: air carrier database and search tools for
passenger and cargo airlines, airplane and helicopter charter services:
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To air carriers across the globe:
If you operate an airline or a cargo, airplane charter, air ambulance or helicopter service, and you do not find your company listed in our database, please send us your IATA ICAO and Country Code, Company Name URL and international telephone number to steve@airtravelcenter.com or click here to use our message service.
Some notes about shopping airlines directly:
- Published airfares (the ones listed by each airline within their own global distribution system) are the highest price tickets of all. Discounts are offered for booking well in advance of your flight and for booking online. Frequent flier and other awards programs reward loyal fliers for buying directly from the airline. Negotiated, contracted, and consolidated airfares range anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of the cost of published airfares. Special promotions for weekend travel and airfare sales or reverse auctions designed to fill up empty seats sometimes offer the very lowest cost of all tickets.
- Shopping directly with an air carrier has several advantages; You may prefer a particular airline, cargo, or charter service for any number of personal and logical reasons. The down side is that your choices will be limited to those flights, routes, and prices offered by this one carrier and its partner airlines or any code-share agreements with other carriers. Within these limitations, things are getting much better. Web only discounts and special airfares along with hotel, car, and vacation discounts are showing up on airline web sites all over the world. Shopping your favorite carrier's web site is a good idea. When price is equally important to you, just make your preferred airline one source among the "check three" shopping rule.
- Many airlines offer their lowest airfares on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday. These are often lighter travel days ... because business travel is heaviest on: Sunday Night and Monday - Thursday Night and Friday, ... so airlines reduce the airfare to fill seats left empty on light travel days. Advance purchase and a Saturday night stay are typical requirements. One exception to the Saturday night stay is Las Vegas, where a 2-day stay is a common rule. Planning a trip, at least 21 days before departure, leaving on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday and staying over a Saturday night is a PLAN.
- Many airlines have "RED-EYE" flights which depart late in the evening or early in the morning on which they can reduce airfares by as much as 25%. (Be sure to ask.) If shopping online, use the parameters offered by a booking engine to set the flight search for late evening, night, or early morning.
- When you feel some comfort with booking your travel arrangements online; you are at a strong advantage. Airlines offer web only discounts at their web site or through subscription email offers sent periodically or specially and through postings on other web sites (like here at the Air Travel Center). The core cause for these discounts is that online bookings are less costly to process and manage - especially e-tickets. A second cause is that through their web site and through subscribed email lists and through postings on other web sites the airlines have a cost efficient and effective way of offering unsold seats at appreciable discounts to a large number of attentive people - like you - wise, wary, and watching. Internet only discounts are a common finding at all air carrier, ticket agent, travel vendor, and travel related web sites for all the same reasons and we can all take the advantage by booking their products and services online.
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Airtravelcenter.com is protected ® by USA national and
by international copyright © and intellectual property laws.
Please write to: admin@airtravelcenter.com for info or permission.
Air Travel Center® 1 E Manor Ave Rear, Enola, PA, 17025-2822
United States, International Telephone: 1-717-732-7222
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Airline Consolidators and Air Ticket Agencies
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Airline consolidators buy airline tickets in bulk and resell them to a niche market. They usually negotiate with one airline or several for ticket prices that range from 40 percent to 60 percent of the published airfares. Since their overhead, distribution and promotions are carefully budgeted, the price you pay will range from 50 to 80 percent of the regular fare for the flight you want. Many consolidators serve an ethnic or expat group. Some focus on a specific destination city or country. For example, in local newspapers you might see a consolidator advertising low cost flights from your city to Krakow or Tel Aviv or Mumbai. That company is likely owned by someone who emigrated from Poland or Israel or India and wants to serve their fellow expats and visitors going from and to the home country.
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Other consolidators operate on a larger scale. They might negotiate wholesale prices with 35 or 40 airlines and focus on serving destination regions like Europe or Asia or South America. They might arrange a wider distribution through air ticket agencies or large organizations. Large or small, the forte of consolidators is international flights. With the development of the internet, some of the larger companies are winning special pricing for domestic flights and using web based reservation systems to add the short haul to the long haul inventory in one database. Small consolidators might contract an air ticket agency to actually issue the tickets for them and larger companies usually issue their own. Either way, the staff who issue airline tickets must have the same training and certification from the ARC (airline reporting corporation) or IATA (international air transport association) as do the airline employees who issue tickets. And whether you book online or through a newspaper ad, your order is processed through a series of checks in the airline and the consolidator computer systems before payment is taken and tickets are issued.
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One drawback with consolidators is that nearly four thousand of them have enterprises across the globe and each one holds their own database of fares so each one must be shopped separately. Their is no central reservation system and no common distribution system that can pull all of these privately held fares together through one interface. The most convenient development yet is that several technology companies have developed programming to allow consolidators to enter their inventory into a database shared with other companies. That way, one interface or one internet booking engine can access the inventory of multiple consolidators. That makes it possible for a travel agent or a person to shop that multiple company inventory and book flights in one session. Another drawback is the limited number of seats that a consolidator is allotted for each flight. Airlines usually set allocations at four seven or nine seats per flight per date per company. That reflects the number of seats at the lowest next and highest contracted price tier. When those seats are sold, that ends it for that flight on that date for that company. Shoppers have to move on to check another database to see if another company has any seats available on that date.
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Still another caveat is that all contract pricing is itinerary specific. Airlines will usually keep their most popular itineraries for themselves and restrict bulk ticket sales to less popular flights where they actually need the help of discounters to fill the seats. Finally, terms are tough. Pricing contracts rarely allow cancellation or change priveleges and when available the charges are often twice the amount of regular priced tickets. Beyond all of that though; you will have the same contract of carriage as any other passenger on that flight.
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A parting note: whether you buy airline tickets or any travel product online or over the phone or in person; do not pay cash. Please use your credit card or Paypal so that you have the financial protections they offer and the benefits like insurance and rewards programs.
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