Sixteen short answers covering how the desk works, who pays whom, and what happens after you click "View deal".
CWS Travel is the consumer brand of CWS TRAVEL LLC, an Iowa-registered limited liability company based at 400 Locust Street, Suite 400, Des Moines, IA 50309. We run an independent fare research desk — we compare published U.S. domestic fares from nine carriers and surface them alongside on-time data and bag rules.
Neither. We do not operate aircraft, we do not issue tickets, we do not collect payment, and we do not hold IATA accreditation. We are a comparison and advisory desk. The actual ticket transaction happens on the operating airline's own website (Delta.com, AA.com, United.com, etc.) or on a third-party booking partner you choose.
Des Moines, Iowa. Phone +1 (515) 421-3068 and email support@cws-travel.com are staffed Monday–Sunday, 6 AM to 11 PM Central Time. After-hours email replies arrive within one business day.
Open the Flight Finder, type your origin and destination airports, pick a date range, then press Compare fares. The results page lists the lowest published fare from each of the nine carriers, plus a 90-day on-time score and a one-line bag rule summary for each.
Delta, American, United, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit, and Hawaiian. We do not currently include charter or regional code-share fares that are not visible in the carrier's own public booking flow.
The fare cache refreshes every 30 minutes. The exact timestamp of the last refresh is printed at the top of the results page. Final fares are confirmed by the operating airline at the time of booking — a fare can change between the moment you click View deal and the moment the carrier loads its own checkout.
You click View deal next to the fare you want. Your browser opens the operating airline's own booking page (or the booking partner you have chosen). You complete the booking there. Payment, ticket issuance, e-ticket delivery, and the booking confirmation email all come from the carrier or booking partner — not from CWS Travel.
On the carrier's own checkout page (e.g. delta.com, aa.com) or on the chosen booking partner's checkout page. CWS Travel never asks for, displays, or stores card numbers, CVV codes, or banking credentials. If a page that looks like CWS Travel asks for your card number, you are not on cws-travel.com — please close the page and email support@cws-travel.com.
Cancellations and refunds are handled exclusively by the airline that issued your ticket (or the booking partner you used at checkout) — not by CWS Travel. Each U.S. carrier has its own cancellation window, refund eligibility rules, and change-fee policy; the short summary lives in our rules matrix, but the authoritative source is always the carrier's own Manage trip page using the confirmation code from your e-ticket email.
Schedule changes (time shifts, equipment changes, cancellations) are issued by the operating airline and are handled by their customer service line or Manage trip portal. CWS Travel does not have the authority to rebook, refund, or override a carrier's schedule decision.
All of that is the carrier's product. We publish a one-page baggage rules matrix as research only. Final fees, seat maps, upgrade availability and lost-baggage logistics live inside the airline's app and its central baggage office. There is no physical shipping or freight handled by CWS Travel.
No. The price you see on our results page is the airline's own published fare for that date and route. We do not add markup, surcharges, or service fees onto your ticket.
A flat per-booking referral fee from booking partners when a customer who came through cws-travel.com completes a booking on the partner's checkout. The fee is the same regardless of which partner or carrier is chosen — see the full affiliate disclaimer.
No. The flight finder, baggage matrix, loyalty guide and destinations pages are fully usable without signing up. The only place that asks for an email is the optional fare alerts form — one address, one route, one ping when the price drops below the ceiling you set.
Three first-party cookies (session, fare-alert preferences, cookie banner state) and zero advertising pixels. The full breakdown lives on the cookie disclosure page; rights to access, correct, and delete are documented on the privacy notice.
Email support@cws-travel.com or open the advisor wizard for a callback inside a Central Time window you choose. A fare advisor will respond inside one business day.