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I often notice this rather strange occurrence when searching for fares through Kayak (it may not be specific to Kayak but it is the tool I use the most).

It is that, for the same flight, there is a huge difference in the price shown from one web travel agent to another as well as the price shown on the official airline website.

Here is an example:

enter image description here

How is Webjet able to sell this for so much cheaper (> $2000) compared to everyone else?

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  • Agencies have their commissions too. You do that yourself you don't need to pay the extra. I had to same problem when I was travelling to Asia. I bought my tickets from Turkish Airlines and it was about 175$ cheaper than the agency quoted price.
    – ha9u63a7
    Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 20:08

1 Answer 1

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I am 99% sure it is the fare class what makes the different. Webjet is not showing the class but definitely it is one of the cheap economy classes where the ticket is non-refundable and not flexible and maybe this kind of ticket is not adding much to FF program status, also you may not get the seat if it was overbooked. The class shown for SWISS YWFFEO is a Y class which means a Full fare class or premium economy, usually this means you can change the flight times for small fee or no fee and you can get refunded if you cancelled, plus extra miles for the FF program (if available).

Why only some agents are offering this class? because these seats are bought in bulk by these agents in advance (cheap prices) and they are reselling them. These seats are high risk investment that's why the prices are cheap but not refundable or anything. For the airlines, these seats are already sold whether you come or not. This is called consolidated tickets. To read more about this, check this page on wikitravel.

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  • I went through the process on Webjet and it actually appears to be the selling price.
    – karancan
    Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 2:23
  • Follow up question: if Webjet is offering that fare class, why is no one else?
    – karancan
    Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 2:23
  • Yes August 3 one way fare from YOW to BOM
    – karancan
    Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 2:31
  • Exactly...I've seen this trend with other airlines/agents as well...
    – karancan
    Commented Aug 1, 2013 at 2:36
  • Thanks. I managed to get a much cheaper price from ULN to KIX on Korean Air today because of this.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Jun 18, 2016 at 9:33

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