Travel Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for road warriors and seasoned travelers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
When searching for a flight on kayak.com (not for me, I don't fly business), it shows a "Secret Carrier" option.
What gives? Why are they unable to tell us even the code-share partner? What if you want to use miles? How does the travel agent know who they're booking with?
The airline industry pretty much lives on the concept of "Publish Fares". These are fares that are available through all sales channels - through the airlines website, through travel agents, through third-party websites, and everywhere else. This means that the same fare is available to business travelers (who are likely willing/able to pay more for a particular flight, and/or on a particular airline) and for leisure travelers who will only fly if the price is right.
As a result, some companies started doing deals with airlines to sell some flights cheaper - but targeting only specific markets. Basically they wanted to be able to sell to the people who would only be flying if the price was right, without having to reduce the price for the business travelers. One of the mechanisms they used for this was "hidden" or "secret" deals, where you don't get told who the flight is with, or the exact times of the flight (and often even where it's via) until after you've actually booked and paid for the ticket.
Business travelers will generally avoid these options due to the lack of flexibility - they normally want to travel with a specific airline, and they normally want to know the exact times they will be traveling. But for many leisure travelers, the unknown factor is worth the additional savings! These flights are normally not eligible for any "extras", such as frequent flyer miles, upgrades, standby, etc - although that can vary from airline to airline.
Within the industry these fares are normally known as "opaque" fares as you don't find out the details until after booking. They are very common for hotels (Priceline and Hotwire being the two best known, but there are others such as Wotif which I believe does these in your homeland), as well as for car rental. They are less common for airlines, but as you've discovered they do exist!
They know, don't worry about them. Its you who're kept in the dark. This is usually something I expect on Hotwire or Priceline, didn't know Kayak started doing that too...
The idea is that you give the requirements, and they tell you "we have a ticket more or less fitting your requirements, but we will only sell it for you at this price if you let us not tell you the details". When you pay, it is usually non-refundable. Whether its a company you actually like or don't, and the dates/hours are good for you or not - you'll discover only after paying.
I tried it a couple of times with hotels, sometimes you get bargains, sometimes you wish you weren't so cheap about things...
A couple weeks ago, I bought a RT under "Secret Carrier", with Major Airline, on Kayak with Airfare.com for $700 cheaper (-35%). It was a nonstop flight so i didn't have to worry too much about long lay-overs.
Little research based on the take-off time and flight duration allowed me to guess the flight and the airline.
Almost immediately after checkout, I had an email from Kayak for pending reservation and an email from airfare.com for reservation confirmed. A couple of hours later, airfare.com sent me the email with my ticket number, which i used to check the reservation on the airline website and everything was included, just like a ticket i would purchase directly with the airline (the qualifying miles, the 50lbs check-in luggage, option to choose my meals, etc.)
One thing that got me worried a bit was that I had 2 lines pending on my credit card of the same amount (one from airfaire.com and one from the airline). But about 5 days later, the 2nd line from the airline disappeared and I've only been charged by airfare.com.
My 2 flights went well. I would definitely buy it again, saved me $700!!!
