Is FareBoom a good place to book your flights through?

I look at Skyscanner to get information on what airlines fly to my destinations but book directly with the airline, always.

Skyscanner is very good for European airlines. It links to the airlines themselves where purchases are made.
I have never heard of the booking agency you ask about. In my experience, fares are never cheaper than those offered by the airlines directly, if you are sure you are using an official airline site.

TripAdvisor has plenty of posts about FareBoom. That site is a magnet for complaints about air travel, an activity where people get upset anyhow. I suggest you carefully make up your own mind which, if any, seem valid.

No, don't use a third party to book. Write down the flights from Skyscanner and then go to the airline website and buy directly.
Make sure you know exactly what is included in your ticket (bags, seat reservations, food, etc) and that your entire trip is one ticket or you have a very big connection time built in between two separate tickets.

Sometimes the prices listed on third party sites are not actually live prices. If you want to get a sense of what has happened to others, go to the trip advisor air travel forum and just scroll down and read some of the "horror" stories.

Thanks! I will not be booking through FareBoom. I want a good reliable airline with a no hassle experience.

I booked through FareBoom. Got a great price and itinerary... it was just what I was looking for.

When I tried to find the same fares on the airline site I couldn't find them.

I haven't taken the flights yet but so far, so good!

No, avoid it and all 3rd party vendors.

I am a proponent of Skyscanner as it is a time saver and finds great fares which I then buy FROM THE AIRLINE ITSELF. If your flights are cancelled, delayed or anything else happens to a flight that you buy via a 3rd party, you must be able to reach someone at the 3rd party, not the airline to resolve the problem which could happen when you're at the airport.

I will not be booking through FareBoom. I want a good reliable airline
with a no hassle experience.

Excellent. Have a great trip!

I booked through FareBoom. Got a great price and itinerary... it was just what I was looking for.

When I tried to find the same fares on the airline site I couldn't find them.

Please clarify.

• Did FareBoom provide you a booking reference number, and you were unable to find your booking with it at the airline's site?

• Or, you were able to find the flights and itinerary at the airline's site, but they have a higher price than FareBoom's?

• What's the percentage of saving?

I know everyone else has said book directly with the airline but I say do what feels best for you. I find that I can get it cheaper through a 3rd party, in my case orbitz, than I can directly with the airline. I've also had situations where I knew about pilot strikes etc... a week ahead of my flight that they didn't let others know about who had booked directly with the airline until 24 hours and so was able to rebook directly with the airline I was flying on with no issues. I didn't have to go through orbitz and we actually arrived about 6 hours earlier in Athens than we had originally planned. And if you are already at the airport when things happen I had no problem talking directly with the airline about that either, in Chicago no less. And I just noticed for our flights in May Frankfurt-Chicago that they had changed our seats. I called the airline directly and no problem, got them changed to what I wanted. Never heard of the one you mention though.

In my experience, fares are never cheaper than those offered by the airlines directly, ...

In my experience, I had gotten lower fares than those quoted at the airlines' sites. At online third party sites, as well as from travel agencies in person. But unless the savings are substantial, I book with the airlines directly, for all the stated reasons.

Hey hippy
I booked flights for 4 of us friends thru fareboom last year for a multi city trip. Had no problems, guess I got lucky compared to what others have said. So many options and opinions from everyone, good bad and ugly! It demands on what is important to you and what suits your fancy and wallet.
I got a confirmation code, printed our boarding passes, had a fabulous time in Venice, Paris and Amsterdam.
Happy Travels
Aloha princess pupule

If anything happens and you have to make changes, it is much easier if you have booked through the airline. I recently bought tickets from orbitz and had to change because of the hurricanes. A very costly and time-consuming process it was.

Please clarify.
Did FareBoom provide you a booking reference number, and you were unable to find your booking with it at the airline's site?
Or, you were able to find the flights and itinerary at the airline's site, but they have a higher price than FareBoom's?
What's the percentage of saving?

I’m sorry it took me so long to reply. My FareBoom booking confirmation states my route was not available to the public and only available by contract to FareBoom customers, which is why I could not find it on the AA or British Airways sites.

I would estimate I saved around $300-400

natalie, please let us know how it went when you return.... thanks

I would consider $300-400 a substantial saving. When I did not book directly with an airline, I would make sure that there is a booking reference number for the airline. Actually for each airline if there are code share flights. Then I would confirm the bookings at the airline sites with the reference numbers. Without a booking number, I would not be able to enter my personal information for the flights at the airline sites. Nor can I check in online or select seats.

My FareBoom booking confirmation states my route was not available to the public and only available by contract to FareBoom customers

That sounds kind of strange to me.

I ran a few dummy bookings and compared them to direct airline bookings. In two cases they saved a little with one being a 3% saving and the other being a 0.4% saving while a third was 5% higher than booking directly with the airline.

What they seem to do is use combination codeshare flights to get the best deal. As an example, I looked at a roundtrip on British Airways from JFK to LHR. Farebook offered me the exact same flights but with a Finnish Airline codeshare to LHR and an Iberia codeshare on the return. That kind of booking is only available to travel agents so I'm guessing that's what they mean by the route not being available to the general public and only available by contract to Fareboom customers. Notice they didn't say exclusive to Farebook customers.

The booking confirmation email is in my husband's account so I cannot copy and paste the exact verbiage. Next time we are planning together I will take a look and see if I can get it down here.

They did charge a $90 commission which was a separate line item on my credit card statement but I ended up with an itinerary that was very convenient (LAX to EDI by way of JFK on the way out and AMS to LAX by way of Heathrow on the way back with minimal layovers and non-stop London to LA... I'll take it. Flying to EDI from LAX without a stop in London is not that easy to do for a bargain as far as I can tell)... All for $700-ish round trip (each, inclusive of fees) flying British Airwarys (some legs American). I had originally planned to book around Black Friday and I booked the Monday before. Considering the economy options I was originally considering, and the fact I now don't have to weigh my carry on for any reason other than the benefit of my own back, and the possibility of an in-flight meal, I am very happy.

My husband got an email from them a bit ago regarding a change in our flights and he got very stressed out for a second... until he opened the email and realized they were in informing us our flight times had shifted to 5 mins earlier :)

I'll definitely report back!

Looking at my route on skyscanner today, KLM has similar offerings in the $975 range... so maybe I only saved closer to $200-300. At any rate, I'm still happy.

I just booked on Fareboom, after starting a thread as to why these prices are not offered by the airlines, and getting a simple answer that had never occurred to me.

I was suspicious that I was seeing some OTA prices for flights that were significantly lower that the airlines for the same flight, or the codeshare airlines could not offer both pieces. i also looked at reviews of Fareboom, and the company seems legit and respectable, the bulk of the bad reviews are for people who had subsequent problems that the airline was not going to solve since they hadn't sold the ticket. Standard answer we have always seen.

Anyway, I just booked Philly-Munich and return from Prague, actual BA and AA flights that I know well from here in Philly (there are NOT many!), and this was a good 30% less than what it would have been on either BA or AA's site. This went through without a hitch, airline number issued in about a minute while the cc charge was pending completion, they had already closed for the evening. And in spite of their saying could take a day, here I am 40 minutes later and have received the e-tickets, with the cc charges exactly as promised.

Makes up for a bait and switch I got caught on several years back with an OTA that left a sour taste in my mouth about them (my own fault -was trying to save a mere $25 per ticket through laziness to go back to Lufthansa, and then did not carefully examine the final screen, because -they wouldn't have changed anything, right? Not only did they change the second flight to one over 3 hours later, but they put us on one they had not even offered. Giving us over 4 hours to cool our jet-lagged jets in Dusseldorf instead of 1 hour, time we had been eagerly planning to slowly wander Berlin to get to our lodging. Oh, well.)