Air Travel Tickets

To buy air travel tickets some years ago, you would need a travel agency. Now you can do it all by yourself.

As any other issue, you have the pros and against of a situation also in this case. In my opinion, it is much better now as I prefer to choose the flight combination that pleases me most.

Usually a travel agency will propose you a couple of choices. If you do it by yourself you can choose among many variations regarding flight times, airlines and stop-overs.

A travel agency will ask you a fee for this task, of course. It's not that much and it also happens if you buy it yourself using the Internet through air travel web sites.

You can also buy air travel cheap tickets directly from the airlines, but often the best choices are found in the main Internet based agencies, such as Expedia, which provides you a real time situation regarding prices and seats availability, other than composing your trip using flights from different companies to have a better price.

An example? If you plan to fly from Rome to Rio de Janeiro, I'll be shown choices from travelling with Alitalia through São Paulo or via Tap Portugal through Lisbon or yet with Air France through Paris, maybe reaching Paris with another airline.

Seems complicated? Not at all because the complete flight is shown you already composed, point to point, considering transit time and airports.

That's why it is important to use trustful air travel web sites, not a unknown one. It would be the same behaviour you would have outside the net, when looking for a respectablel tourism agency. I bought my last flights to Brazil from Expedia.com and everything was ok, that's why I feel comfortable in naming them.

While buying air travel tickets online, pay attention to the airports during connections. Some major websites show an alert when a connection does not leave from the same airport of the previous flight. Some others do not show any alert and you have to be smart to check everything before clicking "buy".

Usually when a flight is proposed online or to a travel agency (they do also use Internet), it is supposed that the connection time will be enough to change flights...but sometimes it is not.

Some airlines state that 35 minutes is the limit between a flight and another - but if you happen to make this connection in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris or Barajas airport in Madrid, I can assure you it is not enough at all. So, what you can do is to check all the flights and choose the one with a comfortable connection time, such as 2 or 3 hours.

Remember that arrival time doesn't mean that at that time, supposing your flight is on time, you are going to be into the airport. The arrival time is when the plane touches the ground. After that it will tax through the airport to its gate, and depending on the airport, it can take 15 to 20 minutes. Consider boarding gates usually closes 20 minutes before taking off and it gives you 40 minutes to transfer from one plane to another...and they aren't even aside!

If you are making connections, often you are going to have a longer flight and a shorter one. This is enough for you to understand that these planes are going to be far from each other on the airport. Sometimes you will need to take the internal shuttle bus from one terminal to another. Do you understand now why it is really necessary to have about 2 hours between one flight and another? Pay attention to these details while buying your air travel tickets.

To have a better idea of how to buy air travel tickets, take a look at this page and see how to buy cheap air fares tickets and air travel packages.

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