Air Fares. Airline or Broker?

[A2QFI]

I looked to book flights for 2 people London to Gibraltar for the Remembrance Sunday weekend . I used Skyscanner and came up with BA Flights thru a broker @ £228.40.
BA were selling the same flights for £272.40. Is it normal for the broker to be cheaper than the airline providing the flights by £40+ in £270 and this far ahead?

[Michael SWS]

Did you actually follow those cheap fares through to completion? I'd be surprised if those fares were actually available for the dates you wanted to travel, as BA guarantees that their website offers the lowest fares.

[L'aviateur]

Yes, the brokers can have some exceptional prices. Once you've found a flight at a good price, search as many brokers as possible and you can often save another 20 - 40 pounds. Often doesn't make sense, but saves money.

[PAXboy]

A broker might have bought a couple of thousand seats for a particular route, across many weeks for a bulk price. Now they might be packaging them and selling hceap but to them, still a profit.

Also, prices change by the minute these days. You might find that the broker had a reason to sell tickets before the end of March and, if you go back today, the price may have jumped. The only proce comparison that is valid is the one that you can make within the space of a singly hour. If you check, say, four sources and go away to think about it ... one or more of them will have changed and you may have to start again.

Of course, all those prices may still be sitting there at the same price but you must expect that they will have changed. The reason being, that the broker and the airline have computer programmes constantly checking to see what everybody else is charging! These are compared and set against their own pricing requirements and altered accordingly - in either direction, at any time! The people who do this best are RyanAir - and I mean that as a compliment.It's called Yield Management.

[raffele]

BA have a lowest price guarantee - you'll have to check the website for details (see below), but I if you find one of their flights cheaper elsewhere on the web, if you then buy the ticket with BA and can prove the cheaper price was available they'll pay you the difference

British Airways - book online with confidence with British Airways (http://www.britishairways.com/travel/whybookba/public/en_gb?prim=booktrip&gsLink=searchResults#pricepromise)

[L'aviateur]

Regarding the BA Price Garauntee; be very careful as it has lots of stipulations. I've tried it twice, once I booked the flight from Marseille to London to discover that I could get it cheaper, but was told by BA it's only valid for flights booked from the UK (booking through the UK website isn't necessarily booking from the UK).

[man friday]

Try easyjet. flights haven't been released for november yet, but usually cheaper than ba for the first few seats