The idea of buying air tickets online is pretty attractive: cut out the profit-hungry travel agency, get cheap deals, control your own journey.
On closer inspection, however, things are not that simple. Most of the ticket sites are terminally kludgy, requiring the user to register and give personal details before they even give prices on sample flights. Sometimes the prices are keen , but sometimes they are far more expensive than a travel agent's. Of course there is also the nagging fear of ending up standing in some far-off airport, wailing "but the website said my tickets would be at the desk".
A local travel agent proved cheaper in most cases than the websites, and also offered personal help and a truly professional attitude. Rathgar Travel in Dublin gave me quotations for three sample return trips:
Dublin to London (August 17th to 30th): £79 to Heathrow or £75 to Gatwick, but staff mentioned a cheaper ticket which they could not themselves sell.
Dublin to New York (same dates): £459
London to Cuba (November 10th to 26th): £1,113 sterling. The staff also helpfully pointed out the Cubatravel brochure in the office, which had trips from London ranging upwards from £515 sterling for a fortnight, including hotel room and breakfast.
The next step was to look for the same trips online, using Biztravel, Travelocity, Expedia, Deckchair and TheTrip. (I did not actually go through with buying a ticket for any of the flights, which in itself can be a sadly instructive experience in good-looking online sites.)
Several of the travel sites had webpages which were too wide for printing, so when printing out a quote the price was outside the printing area. Most do not say, on the webpage with the price details, what class has been chosen, so it is difficult to print out offers and compare them in detail. In the comparisons below prices have been rounded down to the nearest pound or dollar. All flights are economy class, unless otherwise marked.
London
The Microsoft travel site Expedia (www.expedia.com) was way out ahead in terms of user-friendliness. Annoyingly, however, it states that, at present, its tickets are only available to people living in the US, the UK, Canada or Australia. This site quoted prices ranging from £46 sterling for a Ryanair flight to Stanstead to £66 for an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow. But a look into further details found that this excluded £15 tax, which was added onto a more detailed description, bringing the price to £66 sterling.
It is important to look out for extras such as taxes which may not be obvious in initial quotations.
Biztravel (www.biztravel.com) quoted in dollars: from $108 to $130 (£82 to £99). Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) quoted in Irish pounds: from £92 to £124. TheTrip (www.thetrip.com) fed the query into another database and came up with the Internet Travel Network, saying "we found lower fare alternatives using alternate flights" and offered flights ranging from $103 to $221 (£78 to £168).
Deckchair (www.deckchair .com) failed to come up with a quote for this or any other journey entered - parts of the site may simply have been down that day.
New York
Expedia offered Dublin-New York return for £381 sterling - to those living in the UK, of course. The slow-to-load Biztravel quoted $1,218 (£929). Travelocity asked £417 for the trip, in the mysterious "economy with restrictions" class. TheTrip quoted a fare of $643 (£490).
Cuba
Most of the travel websites did not quote for Cuba, but Expedia did, with prices ranging from £1,027. This time, strangely, it quoted in Irish pounds. Travelocity also offered a trip for £1,027.
After these comparisons I would not rush to buy from any of these websites, with the possible exception of Expedia if it were willing to sell to me. Their best use is probably as a place to check for keen prices before going shopping in a local travel agency.
lucred@indigo.ie