Airline Tickets - Lower fees through 3rd party?

[protozoa]

This is related to my Air Transat question below. I found a flight via kayak, that is $985.04 on Air Transat's site, but only $892 on 3rd party sites (orbitz, priceline). My assumption is that the fees attached on the Air Transat site would need to be paid at some point. Does anyone have experience with this? The itemization for the fees is below - maybe the US-based companies don't take into account some of the foreign taxes?


Air Transportation Charges
Base Fare
$426.00
Canada – Fuel and /or Currency Exchange Surcharge ($17.50 per flight segment – South and Florida Flights)
$430.00
Taxes, Fees and Charges
Canada - Air Travellers security charge
$25.91
Canada - Airport improvement fee
$25.00
Canada - Harmonized sales tax
$3.25
France - Passenger service charge
$39.28
France & Martinique - Air passenger solidarity tax
$6.42
France, Martinique & Guadeloupe - Airport & Civil aviation taxes
$29.18

[frlcb]

I have never had to pay fees later on if I booked through a site like Orbitz.

[emilyinchile]

No, sometimes they're just cheaper on third party sites in the same way that sometimes they're cheaper at 3:55 than they were at 3:54 or are cheaper when there's a full moon or whatever other seemingly random factors affect pricing algorithms. Buy them from Orbitz!

[protozoa]

Jan 31, 2014 10:33:02 GMT -5 emilyinchile said:

No, sometimes they're just cheaper on third party sites in the same way that sometimes they're cheaper at 3:55 than they were at 3:54 or are cheaper when there's a full moon or whatever other seemingly random factors affect pricing algorithms. Buy them from Orbitz!

Thanks!

So it occurred to me that in this instance the price difference is because it is a Canadian airline, and as such shows it's prices in CAD. Genius, I am.

[GilliC]

Feb 1, 2014 9:56:21 GMT -5 protozoa said:

Jan 31, 2014 10:33:02 GMT -5 emilyinchile said:

No, sometimes they're just cheaper on third party sites in the same way that sometimes they're cheaper at 3:55 than they were at 3:54 or are cheaper when there's a full moon or whatever other seemingly random factors affect pricing algorithms. Buy them from Orbitz!

Thanks!

So it occurred to me that in this instance the price difference is because it is a Canadian airline, and as such shows it's prices in CAD. Genius, I am.

If you're comparing the prices on kayak, they almost always convert the prices from all the airlines to the same currency.

Unfortunately, I've also run into the case where an airline charges different amounts for the same ticket depending on the currency (based on the billing address).