Don't buy tickets through Kiwi unless you really know what you're doing

[autoposse]

Kiwi is a travel service that books multiple separate tickets at different airports, and strings them together as one "ticket." You may understand what that means (as I thought that i did), but what's most important is to understand that during the brief period when you are transferring from one ticket to the next, you will technically be exiting the airport-- and thus you need to have a visa approved for every city that you have a layover in. 

If you're a fucking idiot like me, you'll only figure this out when you're halfway there and they refuse to let you board because you can't get an India transit visa in time. 

 

So I just spent the money to get a whole new ticket, and the price was just as good as it was with Kiwi, and was with a better airline. I don't know how I got it so wrong, but I hazard everyone else against Kiwi. 

[bobblobfish]

Same day connections on separate tickets is usually a bad idea. Apart from the visa issues, which you can plan for, if anything unpredictable happens (like a flight being delayed/canceled), you need to buy a new ticket, and spend 20x what you saved.

For me, the only worthwhile way to make it work is to spend 1-2 days in the place where I'm connecting, and explore it a bit. It's also ok for shorter flights (e.g. Hong Kong to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur) where arranging alternative flights would not be a big deal.

Edited August 14, 2023 by bobblobfish

[jaynewcastle]

Sorry to hear yet another Kiwi victims sad story. If I had a £ for every Kiwi complaint I've seen, I'd be pretty wealthy

Kiwi are regarded as the worst 3rd party agent & are very well known for cobbling together such flight bookings at a "cheep" price, with unprotected connections, requiring visa's to enter some countries.

If you're going to use a 3rd party agent, rather than booking direct with the airline as always advised, you need to have a clue what you're doing & what the potential problems are that you may encounter

 

There is a good reason over 95% of complaints on the Trip Advisor Air Forum are by people who booked through 3rd party agents & didn't have a clue what potential issues may arise