Consolidated Tickets on popular flight routes are very few and in high season mostly not available. If obtainable, consolidator tickets for popular flights are sold out very fast.

Searching frequently, even daily, to get hold of new offers and last minute discounted tickets for a certain flight, is the secret for flying very cheap with Consolidator tickets.

What Are Consolidator Tickets

Consolidator tickets are normal tickets on regular flights, with the same clauses & restrictions, as the same ticket, from the same airline bought at official published IATA fares.

Consolidated airfares are the cheapest tickets available on any airline in the world, with discounts as high as 70%.

All airlines worldwide would rather sell their unsold tickets at a discounted price, instead of having empty seats at the moment of flight take-off.

But to comply with IATA regulations and to uphold their image, airlines do not sell tickets at discounted rates directly to passengers. With exception of the United States, where airfares, but only for domestic flights, have been deregulated from IATA.

Why do airlines join IATA, if as a member, they are forbidden to sell tickets under the IATA minimum price.

Airlines like to join IATA, because the organization keeps airfares artificially high, for price-insensitive business executives, and passengers who don't know any better, and simply order tickets from the airlines directly or their online ticket agents.

All airlines want full planes at take-off, and try to predict constantly, using a complex "Yield Management Algorithm", the number of eventual empty seats at "Full Fare Rates" for any coming flight, based on the popularity and historical statistics of a certain flight route.

Those projected and predicted empty seats are then offered in bulk to Airline Consolidators and Bucket Shops, with very high discounts.

Consolidators resell those tickets, with only a small commission, while offering most of the obtained discount to the passenger who buys the ticket.

IATA and the Airlines themselves know what is happening, but pretend they don't know that tickets are sold at discounted rates.

The Consolidator system is the source for extra revenue by airlines, without loosing the profit of selling full fare tickets to price insensitive passengers, and at the same time complying with all IATA rules.

In reality, airlines sell their tickets at full fare prices to Consolidators, hence avoiding the term "Discounted Prices", airlines pay huge agent commissions to the Consolidators.

A known but accepted loophole in the IATA regulations, does not restrict the percentage of commission that an IATA member can pay to an agent for selling tickets.

Airlines pretend they do not sell tickets at discounted rates, but simply pay-out commissions to their ticket agents.

IATA pretends they don't know that Consolidators share most of their earned commission with passengers in the form of "Discounted Tickets".

But as Consolidators are not a member of IATA, no IATA rule has been broken, and everyone is happy and makes money, including the passenger that buys a Cheap Ticket.

Ironically, most Airline Consolidator companies are owned by the Major World Airlines themselves.

Airline tickets sold by Bucket Shops & Consolidators are exactly the same tickets as sold at official published fares, by the airlines themselves, but at much cheaper prices.

The number of tickets that airlines will dump at discounted rates is constantly re-calculated by the airline's Yield Management Algorithm.

Consequently, the number of available Consolidator Tickets, for any flights, changes daily, even from hour to hour.

In the past, Consolidators only sold their tickets to tour operators, travel agencies and smaller bucket shops.

But lately, due to E-ticketting (electronic tickets) and the popularity of the Internet, some Airline Consolidators have setup online ticket reservation.

Flying with Consolidator tickets is the same as flying with normal tickets, with the same clauses, services, meals and drinks, but at less expensive prices.

To protect the airline's image, no price will appear on consolidated tickets, or the Full Fare Rate will be printed on the ticket. Airlines don't want Full Fare passengers to know that seats can be bought at much cheaper prices than official published IATA fares.

You can never buy Consolidated tickets directly from an airline, but only purchase them from Bucket Shops and airline ticket Consolidators.

We wish you good ticket hunting!