Fare Search

Who runs it and who gets paid

Stated once more away from the form, because a disclosure that only appears in one place is a disclosure somebody can miss.

The search is operated by an outside booking service. This paper does not sell flights, does not hold a booking, does not take a payment and is not a travel agent. Everything after the search button belongs to that service and to whichever airline the reader ends up with.

If a booking follows a search that started here, the service may pay this paper a commission out of its own side of the transaction. The reader is quoted the same fare either way, and there is no version of this page that produces a different price depending on whether we are paid.

That is the entirety of the arrangement. The paper sets out the funding, the disclaimer states it formally, and the terms say what it means for somebody who books.

Why a paper about walking has a fare search

Because it is the honest answer to how this gets funded, and because the alternative is worse.

A paper with no visible funding either has a hidden one or is not telling you something. We would rather carry one clearly labeled search in one place than sell advertising against the pieces, take money from anybody who owns the ground we write about, or run a membership that turns readers into customers.

It sits on the front page, below the opening, deliberately. It is not inside the pieces, it is not in the header or the footer, and there is no version of this site where a reader has to get past it to read something. This page is the long version of what it does.

What we will not do with it

• Quote a fare in our own writing. Not on this page, not in a piece, not anywhere. The numbers change hourly and they are not ours.
• Claim a fare is the lowest, the best or a deal. We have no way of knowing and no page here says it.
• Name an airline. Not in a heading, not in a caption, not in the writing.
• Put it in front of the reading. One page, one form, and the rest of the paper is the paper.

What the search itself does

It opens on our own subdomain rather than sending a reader off to somebody else's address, which is a small thing that matters: you can see in the address bar whose page you are on.

Everything from the results onward, the fares, the rules, the payment and the booking record, belongs to the booking service, is governed by that company's own terms and privacy notice, and is outside anything this paper can see or change. The privacy notice says exactly what leaves this page and where it goes.

If something goes wrong with a booking

We cannot help, and it is better to say so on this page than to have somebody find out on a bad day.

This paper has no access to a booking, no way to look one up, no way to change or cancel one and no way to refund anything. The service that took the booking is the only party that can, and their contact details are on their own pages and on whatever they sent you.