Questions to Ask For Online Flight Booking with Agency

Agencies play a crucial role in travel business. Customers tend to approach the agencies for seeking different travel options, a customer-focused, unbiased advice for their travel plan and for seeking answers to a number of questions. Booking flights online with an agency can be a rewarding experience as these will strive to find the best possible airline that meets your travel needs. These agencies are in the know of market situation and can help you avoid pitfalls due to your lack of knowledge. The agencies also have the seats-feed data for every flight of the airlines on their systems which can be checked for availability and prices. However, while doing online flight booking, there are certain questions which shall be asked.

1.       What is the baggage allowance?

The agencies receive the airline seats inventory feed from the aggregators. But, while the operational aspects, such as flight numbers, schedules and prices are updates, there could be a problem with the updates of baggage allowances. This has been noticed many times that whenever an airline changes its baggage allowance policies, the same is not reflected in the agency data feed. Some of the agencies might even not publish this data on their websites. The situation becomes even more complex in case of connecting flights and on different airlines. So, it is always a good idea to communicate with the agency for free or chargeable luggage.

2.       Ticket Cancellation Charges and Refunds policies

When tickets are booked with an agency, it is only the agency which shall be approached for refunds in case of cancellations, not the airline. In this respect, it is important to know about the ticket cancellation charges and refunds policies of both the airline and the agency. Ticket cancellation charges are taken by the airlines, and on top of this charge, the agencies also charge some money. This shall be clearly mentioned on their website. If this is not mentioned, then this must be taken in written from the agency in the form of email or some other document.

Sometime, the airline does not offer you refunds in cash or in your card, but instead offers future travel vouchers. If you know in advance what the airline is going to offer as refunds, you would decide on booking tickets with it from that standpoint.

3.       Special Service Request

Once booking flight tickets with the agency, you must tell any special travel requirement or assistance that you might need. Also, the agency shall be able to tell you correctly whether that assistance would be provided, to what extent or not provided at all. These special service requests could pertain to carriage of excess baggage, wheelchair, boarding lift, audio-visual assistance, unaccompanied minor assistance and other types of assistance.

Now, if the special service request has been mentioned by you and the agency has booked it, it is pertinent to cross-check the same with the airline as well so that there are no hassles at the airport.