Kayak for air travel - Too good to be true?

That $2092 flight is not being sold by Kayak but rather by a third party. I just tried your route for May 2027 and see the low price is sold by ”Thrive Travel”. Other agencies are selling this route at a much higher price. I’d be skeptical and do some research on ”Thrive Travel”.

I use kayak just to research flights.

You might remember that I got bilked out of $759 a couple of years back when I was trying to rebook a flight on American.

I was not doing it through kayak but the company that bilked me advertises on Kayak. They have many names and they are one of the companies that have ads that say :"cheap flights" or something similar.

It is said "that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"

I would always recommend that anyone only book through the website of the airline even if it is more money. And be careful that you are really on the website of the airline. Go through the apps on your phone or carefully dial the number on the back of your CC.

Airlines don't normally discount biz class.

Since we don't know the exact date, I just did a generic search. The cheaper flights I saw were on Icelandair with a change in Reykjavik?

Are you sure the flight Kayak is showing is nonstop on BA? And is it being booked by Kayak or is Kayak operating as a third party for it? Some unscrupulous websites offer cheap rate business class. They do it by buying up miles and then selling it as a paid ticket. This is totally against airline policy and if found, you ticket will be canceled and you will get no refund.

You can do what you want, but I ALWAYS book flights directly with the airline or with the airline's alliance.

Be careful with Kayak. Sometimes you are booking through Kayak alone and other times they are consolidating other third parties and you are really not booking through Kayak, but these other third parties who may not be reputable. Once they get your charge, they have so much legal jargon, it is hard to chargeback your credit card.

I would suggest to always book directly with an airline.

Thanks Threadware and all.

Bostonphil - I recall your sad saga.

As I usually say, If it’s to good to be true, it is too good to be true.

(Late edit … just made the above text bold)

Never, ever book air with third party vendors. If the flight is canceled or delayed, you're in for a world of frustration. The airline directs you to the third party. The third party directs you to the airlines. The circle continues forever, until folks shell out more money and book a new ticket. There are many sad stories here of third parties bookings gone south.

Typing Thrive travel into Google could be very enlightening before you book this

A lot of times what these places are doing is posting fare they found somewhere at some point like a month ago or six months ago or whenever the last time they checked that fare was. that doesn’t mean that’s the fare they’re going to get you. What happens is you give them your credit card number and they will then tell you that it went up and by the time you finish giving them all the money they want it is the same price as it would’ve been buying it from the airlind except that when the airline changes the flight you get to deal with thrive travel ( do you really think they have customer service? Go back to that five minute research on Google before you buy if you do because you will discover they don’t. )

I picked a random May 2027 SEA-LHR query on kayak.

Several sources came up of where to buy the ticket; Thrive was around $1850, all the others were in the $3400-$3600 range.

I don't know about you, but what pops immediately into my mind is 'how can that be?'

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I looked at SEA - LHR flying on 05/10/2027 through Google Flights and Kayak. All of the "cheap deals" were on third party websites. On that date you can fly Icelandair in Saga Class for $1877 and BA business classfor $3879. Stay away from the third party sites. If anything goes south on booking, they are going to be of no help.

I would be weary of Thrive Travel lets say you book the ticket and they trake the money and fail to ticket it with BA. Or they claim its Business Class but BA says they never relased inventory to them and now you are booked in Premium Economy or Economy or are told at checkin pay up to $5,000 you owe use the difference. I would go to Trust Piolot and other websites and Google it. Ask yourself is it worht saving $1,000 to potentially be scammed?

What I do is book airfare and then Bid for an Upgrade sometimes if you are lucky and its off season you can bid $500 for Premium and $800 for Busness Class each way and purchae your Y Ticket for $900-$1,000 and enssure it snot Basic Economy. So if you wanted r/t you could bid.

Another issue is who is going to help you if the ticket is not issued and you call them and get a "number not in service" message. If you want you can look at Consolidators for Business Class that are Legit. Kayak in its terms and conditions says its not responsible as an agregator if something bad happens with the third party. I would look at SkyScanner as an option.

Also I would wait until Cyber Monday as you may find a better deal and I would look at a Combo Business Class outbound Premium Economy return(and Bid for the return if you feel like its worth it)

This post on Better Business Bureau is reporting a scam.

https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker/lookupscam/1019455

Another "smell" is they seems to have a lot of sub-domains that show up and saturate a google search for "Thrive Travel problems". Would avoid myself.

Here's how they do it Buried in their terms of use

"7. FREQUENT TRAVELER POINTS AND MILES

Frequent traveler points or miles, upgrades, certificate vouchers and other discounts or incentives may not apply to all flights, hotel stays, or other travel services. Some of our tickets may be booked using points, and do not qualify for mileage accrual.

I bolded that 2nd sentence because it's the red cape being waved in front of the bull. EVERY major (and probably any minor) frequent flyer program forbids the sale of points. So you buy your ticket from Thrive... the airline finds out. Ticket is cancelled and the airline has NO responsibility. And yes, there are times this happens AFTER you flew your first flight so you are wherever you wanted to go with no way home. The airline won't care that you didn't know it was a points ticket or that you didn't know it was against their program rules!

"Some of our tickets..." are bought with points as you say. They seem open to any scheme.

The Better Business Report I linked above was for a ticket on a Skiplagged* flight.

• https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skiplagging