Iranian Travel agencies

Buying a flight through a Persian-speaking agency usually comes down to one phone call and a few messages, and that short conversation is where the expensive mistakes are made. This page is about the booking itself: the name that goes on the ticket, whether a journey in several legs is really one ticket or two, and what the cheap figure quoted down the phone quietly leaves out. The most important part comes first. The name on the ticket has to match the passport exactly, given names and all, and a booking made from a spelling somebody remembered rather than read off the document is either an expensive correction later or a refusal at the desk.

What the Verified badge does and does not say

Verified says one thing only: a real person stands behind this profile and manages it themselves. YabInfy does not check anyone's certificates, licences, experience or competence, and the badge is not for sale.

Who is on this list

This page has no subcategories, so everyone sits in one list and the category tells you nothing about what any of them actually does. Some work a handful of routes and know those airlines' fare rules by heart, some sell mostly tours and group travel, and some are one counter with one person behind it. So your first question is a plain one: is this route, on this airline, part of their everyday work? The parent page, travel and hospitality, deals separately with the seller and organiser question and with the paperwork of a package.

The name on the ticket, the thing that is not easily undone

• Read the spelling off the passport, not out of your head. Open the data page and read it out letter by letter. A Persian name can be written in Latin letters several ways, and the only version that counts is the one printed in the document you will hand over.
• Do not shorten a given name. Depending on the airline it has to appear in full and exactly as the passport has it, and if the passport carries two given names, ask whether both belong on the ticket.
• A surname and a given name the wrong way round is not a small error. They are separate fields on a ticket and they are checked separately against the document.
• If you hold more than one document, say at the outset which one you are travelling on. Somebody with both an Iranian passport and a German document may have two different Latin spellings, and the ticket has to agree with whichever you show on the day.
• Once the ticket is issued a correction is either chargeable or not allowed at all, depending on the airline and the fare, and sometimes it means reissuing at today's price. If the name and the document disagree, you can be turned away at check-in with the money gone.

One ticket or two: journeys in several legs

• The baggage allowance is not necessarily the same on every leg. Where two airlines are involved, the weight, the number of bags and even the size of the cabin bag can change on the second flight. Ask leg by leg, and ask for it on the confirmation.
• A self-transfer and a through ticket are not the same animal. If every flight is on one ticket and the first leg runs late, getting you onward is owed by the party that issued it. On two separate tickets the second flight is simply another contract, and the seat you did not reach is usually gone.
• Your bag does not always travel to the final airport. With separate tickets you normally have to collect it and check it in again, which means leaving the transit area and needing more time. Ask how far the bag is checked.
• Do not treat the gap between two flights as spare time. Every airport has a minimum connecting time and a through ticket respects it, while a connection you assembled yourself may fall under it. If the two flights use different airports in the same city, learn that at the booking and not on the day.

Fares: the kind you can change and the kind you can only abandon

The number quoted to you on the phone is almost always the cheapest and most restricted fare on that flight: a ticket whose date cannot be moved and whose money does not come back, where abandoning the trip tends to return some of the taxes and none of the fare itself. A dearer fare buys the same seat on the same aircraft, and the whole difference is in those rules.

So ask for two figures in the same call: the cheapest fare, and the nearest one that allows a change of date. Then ask what a change costs, because it usually means a change fee plus the difference in the fare on the day, and one number alone is not the answer. If your return date is not settled yet, learn that before you pay.

Children and infants

• A child's fare is rarely as proportionate as it sounds. From the second birthday a child has a seat of their own, and the fare is often close to an adult's rather than half of it.
• An infant under two normally has no separate seat and, depending on the airline, is charged a percentage of the fare or a flat amount plus the charges. How much baggage comes with that, and how a pushchair is counted, differs from airline to airline.
• Age is taken at the date of each flight, the return included. A child who turns two between the outbound and the return is no longer on the same ticket, and that has to be said before anything is issued.
• Every child needs a travel document of their own, and the spelling rule above applies to it word for word. Seats together are not automatic either, so raise it while the booking is being made.

When the passports in one family are not the same

Routes are not equally open to everyone travelling together. The document each person travels on decides where they may transit, how long they may stay there, and whether even that short stop needs permission. So the cheapest routing for one traveller may not be available to the person beside them, and putting everybody on a single ticket does not make that go away.

An agency can advise, and often has real experience of it, but it does not decide. The airline checks your document at the desk and the border authority decides at the frontier, and because the airline is fined for carrying someone who is turned back, that check is strict. Ask for the transit condition to be confirmed for each traveller against their own document, and note that changing terminal, or stepping outside the transit area, can change the answer.

The travel insurance offered alongside

The policy an agency offers you at the counter is another company's product, and the contract is between you and that insurer rather than with the agency. On the day of a claim the insurer decides and the printed conditions have the last word, so this is one to read rather than nod at.

• Cancellation cover and medical cover abroad are two separate products, and neither stands in for the other.
• Cancellation cover normally pays only for named reasons, and usually leaves a share of the loss with you. Changing your mind is almost never one of the named reasons.
• There is a window for buying it: depending on the policy it generally has to be taken out close to the day you book.
• Get the conditions in writing before you say yes, and check whether a card or a policy you already hold covers the same ground.

When to book

Around Nowruz, the summer school holidays and the turn of the year, everybody travels at once; and because each Bundesland sets its own school holiday dates, that rush does not fall everywhere at the same time. On the popular routes the cheapest fares go first and what remains is the same seat at another price. If your dates have any give in them, ask what a day either side does to the figure: in a busy season that gap beats any discount.

What to ask when you book

• What the final price is with taxes and charges, and whether a payment fee is added on top.
• Whether this journey is one ticket or several separate ones, and how far the bag is checked.
• What the allowance is on each leg, and whether the cabin bag rule is the same throughout.
• Whether this fare allows a change of date, and what comes back if I do not travel at all.
• If a letter of a name has to be corrected, whether the airline calls that a correction or a reissue, and what it charges.
• How each child's age has been counted, on the outbound date and on the return date.
• Whether the transit condition has been checked separately against each of our own documents.
• YabInfy checks none of this, so ask for it yourself, and ask to see the document where it matters.

The nearest agency is not automatically the right one

After the first call, almost all of a booking happens by phone, email and messages, so the closest counter is not necessarily the best choice. An agency that sells your route every week is usually worth more to you than one at the end of your street, and if you would rather talk face to face, the cities are listed further down this page.

Judge the reviews on what a ticket buyer is in a position to know: whether the figure quoted at the start was the figure paid at the end, whether the confirmation arrived promptly and without errors, and whether anybody picked up when the plan changed. Delays, strikes and weather are not the seller's doing.

Privacy runs both ways here. YabInfy never records or publishes who looked at which profile, or who a contact request was sent to. A review, on the other hand, is public text under a display name you choose, so if you would rather your destination and your dates were not on show, write about the quality of the work instead of about the trip. An agency's number sits behind the "Show contact details" button on its own profile.

The first hours after the confirmation lands

Open the confirmation and check four things the same day: the spelling of every passenger's name on every flight, the date and time of each flight, the airline's own booking reference, and the line that states the baggage. Watch a flight that leaves after midnight in particular: its date is the following day and not the evening you set off, and a good share of missed departures start in exactly that line.

The airline's booking reference is not the agency's file number: it is a short six character code that lets you look the booking up on the airline's own site. Do that, and confirm there that the reservation really exists and that the name reads as it should. If something is off, call the same hour and put it in writing too. In the first hours a correction is usually a small piece of work; a month later the same correction can cost as much as a new ticket.

Accommodation and the rest of a trip live on the parent page, travel and hospitality. If you run an agency yourself, add your business; the FAQ sets out what this directory does and does not do.