BudBrain

I've had a quote from 'Dial a flight' for our trip from London to Perth (inc 2 night Singapore stop-over on the way in) and they come up around (£900 per adult).

I've had a look at Singapore airlines website and I calculate the same route at £1,100 per adult.

How do these 'middle men' get cheaper flights? Am I missing something? (do they get exclusive deals?)

Kingseat

The agents will have bulk bought seats as soon as they were released. For instance Singapore releases flights to Perth today at 800 GBP. Your agent comes in and buys 20 of those seats but then sells them to you at 900 GBP thereby making their profit.

The Singapore Airlines price on the web may be for seats that are now in short supply so they increase their prices.

I think that's how it works.

BudBrain

I don't think that's the case, as the seats I'm after have only been available for a day (Feb 2011)

Pollyana

Lots of complex fare rules behind it - I did a course on it once but can't remember all the details now. It includes stuff like -
A certain number of seats on each flight are released at a certain fare, not every agent has access to every fare class.
Fare classes have different rules - changeability, refund or not, and that can affect the price too.
If only 10 seats are released at £800 when those are gone, they are gone - unless one becomes available again due to cancellation. Other seats may well all be at different prices, some cheaper, some more expensive.
And not all seats on a particular flight are released at the same time - there may be 100 released in OCtiber for a flight a year ahead, 50 released in March, then another 200 in July, with the remainder reserved until they see what the demand s like, prices being set according to the demand at the time.

Pays to shop around as sometimes an airline will have a cheaper class available than a consolidator does, but in most cases a consolidator - Austravel, Expedia etc will be cheaper.