Flying to Madrid

I personally would only buy tickets from the airline itself.

Even if a consolidator is selling it for a little bit cheaper, why have an extra layer between you and the supplier?
I can imagine even huger hassles if you had a situation that caused you to need to postpone or cancel.

Kayak tells you the prices. Find the flight you like. Go find it on that airlines website.

I should have mentioned, it's a difference in price that, at the extreme, is around $600 on the 3rd party site (unbelievably low) to $2,000 per person on the airline website (absolutely prohibitive price for us for a one-way ticket).

Why looking at one way tickets? 90% of the time we buy through the airline site. Rarely find anything significantly cheaper elsewhere.

I might use a site like Kayak just to get an idea of what flights are available, but I always book directly with the airline in question. I think third party sites just add confusion to the mix. If there is a problem along the way, who is going to fix it - the consolidator who just sold you the ticket, or the airline whose ticket it is? I also wonder why you are looking at one-way tickets. If you think you will be flying into Madrid and out of somewhere else, you should be looking at "multi-city" tickets (which you will see referred to on this site as "open jaw").

Sometimes those super cheap flights are often 20+ hours, when you can make it from the west coast in 13 - 14. Yet even the shortest flights are still well under $1000 for almost any time. Are you leaving this weekend?

Well,... I took a look and it does seem that this 'Just Fly' bucket shop is selling tickets for flights this spring that are a little over a third of the price of the airline's published fare.

Looks like a deal that might be worth the risk if you need to buy the tickets now. But, if you have time to be patient, it still might be best to wait until the next sale comes around. During a 'price war' is when you'll find similar prices to the consolidators.

Thank you all for the responses. The cheap prices are for the exact same flights (and I'm only considering under 20 hours) for lower prices, which I have found suspicious, and unsurprisingly for those two websites I mentioned I've read horror stories along the lines of my fears (e.g. the 3rd party site not actually having the tickets, upping the price well after sending a confirmation, customer service giving up and not returning calls or emails when customers complain, and so forth).

In regard to timing, looking at early summer, so no huge rush to buy tickets. Hoping to have all of my ducks in a row soon, though, so that I can confidently book the moment I see tickets I like - accounting for flight times, airlines, vendor, etc.

Why looking at one way? It's been a process. The return trip will be from the Cologne/Bonn area and when I've looked at the multi-city itineraries they are coming up with one of the flights having a crazy layover and / or the price being higher than buying the legs separately. Part of the issue, I think, is that the airlines for each leg will probably be different - only Aeroflot seems to service both regions and their arrival times in Madrid aren't my preference.

If anyone has suggested airlines, that would also be welcome. Or any other relevant advice, of course. So far I'm seeing Iberia and Norwegian Air Shuttle as top options, with Turkish and Aeroflot also having some decent options.

Hi Darren. When I search, it looks like the Delta / KLM / Air France alliance has good service LAX to MAD and CGN to LAX with one short connection each way. Did that show up on your searches? Or is there some reason that doesn't work for you?

Enjoy your trip!

One-way tickets are almost always more expensive for your trans-Atlantic flights, so keep trying with the multi-city ticket options. I'd probably go direct to Delta to more easily find the flight schedules that Bob described.

I understand about the desire to save money and strive to always do so, but for a deal that sounds too good to be true...........

I search everywhere. If I find a good deal, I'll at least check with the airline. Typically if the deal exists you can get it anywhere and there's a certain safety net booking through the airline directly. We had a flight from Madrid to Barcelona on Iberia airlines. The airlines went out of business before we traveled. Since I booked it through the airline as one ticket, however, they adjusted my flights to get me where I was going (not without some prodding though).

I'll research for a couple of months before booking. After that, I have a good idea what the going rate is and what is a good deal. If I spot a good deal. I'll try to book it then.

I've had many times when I started booking a great deal and it was no longer available by the time I got through the booking. I don't think it's bait and switch as much as good deals rarely stay unsold for long.

Be sure that 3rd party websites are showing you the total costs, not just base ticket price. Typically airline websites give you the total ticket, fees and taxes prices. Those add up significantly.

Most airlines have partners and so it is not uncommon to fly one way on one airline and return on another with multi-city tickets. These partnerships will show up on the airline sites.

I too buy my tickets through the airlines. I feel more secure that way in case things change or go wrong.