Terminal A are a Spanish company whose unique proposition on the flights market is that they will sell you scheduled flights at ‘less than cost’, because they will hand some of the commission back to the user. This is a little bit of a cashback proposition for booking your flights, but is it worth the hassle?

I looked at Terminal A for flights from London to New York, departing 16 April 2009 and returning one week later. The best flights I was offered were with British Airways for £252.70. These flights come with a £1 discount — now I know that airlines have reduced their commissions lately, but am I really supposed to believe that British Airways and other airlines quoted on their New York flights results page pay just 0.4% commission on their long haul flights? Any commission-based discount is then wiped out by the £4 Terminal A service fee, leaving the British Airways flights at £256.70.

By comparison, Kayak.co.uk shows me direct flights with Kuwait Airways for £251 if I book with Ebookers, or £258 with British Airways — also booked with Ebookers, but only one pound cheaper than booking direct at BA.com. Checking Netflights.com takes the Kuwait Airways flights down to £249, but doesn’t get any further saving on other airlines. Meanwhile, a quick look over it Expedia shows that they might be giving away 200 nectar points, but they are charging £10 more for British Airways and £15 more for virgin — that looks like a handling fee, but they aren’t being transparent with their price breakdowns. The best Skyscanner can offer me is £287 — but this is hardly surprising, I don’t think Skyscanner’s strong point is on long-haul flights.

So is the consumer any better off by checking Terminal A as well as all the other flight comparison websites that are out there? I have to enter all my details to see if there are any more hidden fees for credit card processing or anything else — it doesn’t look like there are, but I always hate websites that want to take my valuable passport details from me before I can find out for certain how much they’re going to charge me.

Beady-eyed users might point out that is Terminal A have IATA membership at the bottom of their website, but no ATOL number — this is because they are headquartered in Spain, so that’s where you’ve got to go if you have any problems with your booking. In these uncertain times, I think that most passengers would want to choose security of booking over saving a few pounds, especially where there is such little saving on long-haul flights. If any users have any experience of terminal A, we’d love to hear them, just as we’d love to hear any samples of bigger discounts being available than the ones we found on flights to New York.