When planning flights for our Rick Steves 11 day tour of SicilyI checked out a Skyscanner itinerary. Skyscanner is a websitekind of like KAYAK but offering cheaper connecting flights. We also wanted to spend 4 days in Paris before starting our tour. Imagine the following airline plans: French Bee to ParisAir Italia to PalermoRyan Air from Cantania to RomeWest Jet to CalgaryAlaska Airlines to PortlandOR. At firstI was afraid. Would all these flight connections be on time without any delays? And what if I missed a connection? Would I end up spending wasted hours in the black hole of an airport terminal? Or worsewould I end up like the woman I saw in the Calgary airport--sitting uprightsomewhat bent overstirring in a comfortless plastic chairher eyes closedher mouth openher large snorts and snores punctuating the terminal air. Maybe a larger carrier would be a safer betright? But then the reduced cost of such a flight route won me over. Forget the fancy flights and frills of 5 inches of additional leg room. We could spend our money better on nicer hotelstaxisand higher quality wines. I went for it . . .and it worked beautifully. Every flight worked out and we easily got to every gate with time to spare. Okaywe might have hurried our pace through the Milan Airportbut we made it in plenty of time. Not sure this is the story of everyone who has ever gone with Skyscannerbut I would do it again. And West Jet ended up being our favorite flight.
Posted by
San DiegoCalifornia
6831 posts
But Skyscanner is a third party vendorcorrect?
Posted by
SapulpaOKUSA
6891 posts
We use Skyscanner the same way we use Google Flights or Kayak: we use it to search for flightsthen book from the airlines themselves. It is handy to be able to see a number of airline options on the same screen.
The only time we used a third party vendor to book flightsthe itinerary workedbut there were some fraught moments when KLM couldn't easily find our booking record. It worked outbut I can do without the added stress.
Posted by
OP
4 posts
Probably need to clarify here. I also used Skyscanner to see what was possible ( like Google Flights) then booked through individual airlines. I did not use a third party booking service.
Posted by
Western WA
224 posts
Soanother tool. I suppose it comes down to how comfortable someone is with unprotected connections.
Posted by
AtlantaGAUSA
3164 posts
You got lucky.... to anyone else don't try itmore often than not people don't get lucky. Do an internet search
Posted by
OntarioCanada
6982 posts
So am I correct that you just used Skyscanner to select the flightsbut then booked the individual flights separately on different tickets? You are a much braver person than I would be. I much prefer the safety of connecting flights booked on the same ticket - especially if they are on different airlines.
Posted by
TresanaHighlands RanchCOUSA
24050 posts
Personally I was not sure of the purpose of posting other than to hype Skyscanner a bit. It is just a search engine. So what is the excitement?
Posted by
LakewoodColorado
19571 posts
My thoughts exactlyFrank. New poster; first two posts are unsolicited recommendations.
Hmm!
I've been seeing too much of this recentlya new poster joining just to post a recommendation. Maybe the Community Guidelines should specify no unsolicited recommendations until after the hundredth post.
Posted by
Republic of Texas / U.S.A. / Magyarország / Budapest
25312 posts
Yupthe OP's other thread is a promotion for Trattoria da Federico. LOL.
Posted by
TXUSA
5916 posts
Wellwhile I wouldn’t do thisI am really glad it worked for you! And I understand your excitement and appreciate your humor. LOL.
And it’s true that if you are prepared for something to go wrong (one delayed flight…..)and you aren’t in a time crunchthen you have successfully saved money.
AA keeps trying to sell me a one hour connection in Helsinki coming home (and all on the same ticket) and if I don’t have flexibility to stay a day because of a missed flightI regretfully say no thanks. Ha!
Posted by
EdmondsWA 🌨 ☂
13271 posts
French Bee to ParisAir Italia to PalermoRyan Air from Cantania to RomeWest Jet to CalgaryAlaska Airlines to PortlandOR........ Every flight worked out and we easily got to every gate with time to spare. Okaywe might have hurried our pace through the Milan Airportbut we made it in plenty of time
When did you go through Milan?
...
Posted by
LakewoodColorado
19571 posts
It looks like Air Italia has flights from Paris to Palermo with connections in Milan.