This upcoming trip includes a whopping 8 flights using 7 different airlines.

As you can imagine, it took a bit of time to get it all organized and booked.

Booking flights is pretty straightforward for the most part as most airline websites are pretty user friendly and will happily take your money and send you a ticket.

Most airlines.

Smaller airlines in Central Asia?   Well, not so much.

Some websites will just not allow you to book a flight if you’re outside their country while others won’t let you use a foreign credit card to pay.

For those flights you’re left with no alternative but to book through a third party website instead.

Third Party Websites

There are dozens of third party websites out there offering up deals on flights.

Instead of just one airline, they show you all the possible flights from point A to point B.

Popular websites include Kayak, Skyscanner, Booking, and Google Flights.

It’s a great way to see the different options available to you and often include more obscure or low budget airlines in their search results.

For anyone traveling, it’s the smartest way to research your flights.

However, when it comes to actually booking the flight, as a general rule of thumb, you should always book them directly on the airline’s official website.

For one, the flight may actually be cheaper since you don’t have to pay the additional fees that a third party website may tack on.

More importantly though is if something happens to your flight like a change or cancellation, your life will be much easier if you’re dealing directly with them instead of an extra middleman.

Flight cancelled!

One of the flights I had booked was on FLYONE airlines from Tashkent to Paris.

FLYONE is one of those obscure airlines and it was also one of the bookings I had to do through a third party because it wouldn’t let me purchase a ticket directly on their website.

Anyway, one day just out of the blue I got an email with the subject line: “There have been changes to your flight schedule”

I’ve had these emails from time to time and usually it’s just informing me that a flight time has changed which, while sometimes annoying, is usually pretty easy to manage and work around.

This was not one of those emails.

As I scrolled down the page I saw in big red letters “Cancelled”.

Well, shit.

No reason was given but I did notice that all their flights in that region were removed from their listings for the next few months.

My guess is that either due to the instability around the area or perhaps the high fuel costs, the airline just decided to cancel all their flights in the region.

To top it off though they didn’t automatically refund my money.   Nope, for that I had to go through my third party website.

From there began a one month run around between my third party booking site, myself, and FLYONE airlines.

I even considered disputing the charge or even using my credit card’s insurance to recoup the funds.

Eventually though the money was refunded and a new flight on a different airline was booked.

Flight Cancelled (2)

Just over a week later I received another email from another airline, Tezjet, with a one word subject “REFUND”.

Oh, this can’t be good…

The body of the email was just as concise: “Your ticket has been refunded”.

No reason, no solutions, no anything.

A quick Google search of the airline discovered that the Uzbekistan based airline had suffered a landing gear collapse on one of its’ flights a week prior and now the government had suspended their license.

At least the money was refunded so that was a plus but it now left me scrambling to rebook yet another flight.

After a little tweaking and researching, a new flight was found and booked and, now, everything is ready to go.

In just 7 days, Nathan and I will be off to the Five Stans.

A new adventure is just around the corner…