In these uncertain times, we all need a little more peace of mind. Would you agree?
Booking directly with the airline company itself can make things a whole lot easier when things go wrong (i.e. your flight is cancelled) and it becomes a priority to get timely customer service for a re-booking or refund. However, there are many travel agents working tirelessly to help Australians to get back to Australia and they should be acknowledged.
After having our flight to Australia cancelled in July 2020 due to COVID-19, I have personally experienced the pain of trying to get an online travel agent to re-book our flight but with no success (see article My story). Eventually, we booked directly with Cathay Pacific and never had any problems re-booking our flight (except that at the time, every time we re-booked, it was cancelled). Until we had the problems trying to re-book with our online travel agent, we had never considered booking with an airline directly before because we had the idea it would be unnecessarily expensive – however, we found the ticket prices were very similar to online booking websites.
If you want to try booking with an airline directly, this page contains links to all the airlines that have a history of flying to Australia during COVID (for a breakdown of which airlines are flying to each Australian city, go to my post). Qantas is expecting to resume flights from December 18 (click here to book with Qantas directly).
Whatever way you book, do you research first. Check their reviews on websites like Trustpilot. Especially, you’ll want to check their policies on refunds and re-bookings. It’s a pain, but it could spare you a lot of pain in the long run.
- Go to article: Should I book with a travel agent?
