CruisingSince2012

Booking it thriough Princess saved you money. That is not luck, just a smart decision. My airfare for next year is $1,023 including taxes and fees because it was booked through the cruise line. Regular price for everyone who books it directly is in the $1700s.

Also when the flight was finally booked, she did it with the AMA Waterways lady on hold knowing the amazing airfare wouldn't be held once she hung up. She learned from her mistake the first time. The $981 flight was bad anyway, so it worked out better.

2 hours ago, fbgd said:

I think the medals comment went right. over. your. head.

 

Also being in the top 11-15 TAs doesn't necessarily make her a good TA. If that award is based on commissions it just means she is slinging more widgets than the next person. Good widget slingers aren't necessarily doing customers a favor.

Wrong. One hundred percent of. the money she earns is an hourly salary. She never gets commission for anything from anybody, according to my mom. So being ranked that high really means she is a great travel agent and has nothing to do wiht money.

3 hours ago, frantic36 said:

At this point in time I don't think your travel agent sucks...I think she deserves a medal.

They are not medals, but every year she is awarded as a top 11-15 travel agent in a 14-state region in her company. That is how I, know she does not suck. Now she is too popular to accept new clients because of her excellent performance as a travel agent.

To everyone else: My problem as never been about the duratoin of a transatlantic flight. Somehow people twisted my comments. I would have the same issues if I was flying to Mexico City. It is all about the layover duration, not time in the air, especially when we return to the USA, and paying a lot less than if we had booked flights directly through the airline.

14 hours ago, brian1 said:

You guys rattled the cage by having a pop at her TA.If you just said, "Yeah well done." it would have been done and dusted in a few posts, LOL.

People are too judgmental here. It looks like everyone assumes just because my travel agent does business a different way from many others with at least one of her clients, she sucks.  The truth is.nobody else understands what my mom needs and wants in the process of booking flights better than she does because nobody else has her as a client. So people on message boards don't have a right to judge her in the form of lashing out on a traveling companion of her client without having the same travel agent.

17 hours ago, Globaliser said:

Well, if you are stressing out, you are simply doing this to yourself without any objective basis or reason.

 

There are some domestic flights that take 11½ hours, non-stop, which shows you that 9½ hours isn't a big deal. I routinely do 11-14 hour flights each way for weekend breaks, and almost routinely flying for 22 hours each way on another of my regular routes. There are plenty of people who fly 8-ish hours from London to New York on day trips (although they now have to fly back overnight).

 

As Zach1213 says, if you don't build up the differences inside your head, you'll find that flying across the Atlantic is really not that different. It's air travel all the same, and you just happen to be going in a different direction.

What domestic flight itinerary could take 11 hours? Flying from central Ohioh to southern California takes 4 hours - less htan half the time spent flying from Atlanta to Rome. So no, it is not possible to spend more time flying coast to coast than over an ocean.

National differences are in my head all right - in the form of using my eyes and ears to witness them. To not believe there are any differences, you must have never traveled internationally in your life.

On 10/30/2018 at 8:59 AM, Zach1213 said:

 

Don't overthink it. I think that stands in a lot of people's way and makes them unnecessarily nervous. From a flying standpoint, it's honestly not that different. You're looking for a ticket from one city to another, via some third/intermediary airport. The same could be said whether you're flying from Florida to Budapest or from Buffalo to Los Angeles. The ocean distance isn't that much different, it's just that there's an ocean and a language in between. But I think a lot of people stress themselves out thinking that flying to another country is so much different, when in reality it's not...especially somewhere like Europe which is very similar to the US and English is extremely common. You'll do great.

You are totally wrong. It takes at least 9 hours to fly from Atlanta to central Europe. My flight from Atlanta to Rome was 9 hours. I flew into a tradewind between Paris and Atlanta, sob that flight took 9.5 hours.

We stress ourselves out because there are huge differences between domestic and international vacations except in Canada.

Inexperiencei certainly is part of it. The Italy trip in November 2016 was my first to another continent. We have visited Canada on both land and cruise vacations, but that is nothing like crossing.the Atlantic Ocean twice.

10 hours ago, waterbug123 said:

Because there is no reason to have to pick up something the TA can email to you.  As for a hard copy of the actual e-ticket, if you have the airline app, all of that information can be accessed from within the app, generally speaking.

That is one reason Mom needs a hard copy: She does not have Delta's app. It is always better to have a hard copy even if you are knowedgable about using an appb to get an eticket anyway, so you should not have an issue with the fact we have one.

10 hours ago, waterbug123 said:

But you insisted that this all had to be done through a travel agent, and from where I sit, it seems that this particular TA is trying very hard to make herself seem more necessary than she really is.  Did she offer your mom the option to just print an email? Because if she didn't, and instead said "you will need to come pick up your tickets" she is being very irresponsible, in that she's making your mom think there are things that only SHE (the agent) can do, and that is simply untrue. And if she actually called the paperwork in question a "ticket" she is really feeding the false idea of your mom NEEDING an agent.

It absolutely is true we need to go through a travelr agent for booking airfare. That is just the way we are personally based on the trip itinerary and our comfort level. Picking up a hard copy of the eticket is just one small detail other people know more about by having a lot more experience with flying internationally.

The travel agent said only economy tickets are available through the cruise line. The only restriction I am aware of is a fee to pick seats on KLM unless I wait until checkin. Of course, that just means I will not select my seat until June 11, when seat selection is free. Obviously the travel agent would not select a fare that prohibits checking bags because she booked the 13-day itinerary.

When Mom was thinking about booking business class seats, she had no idea they are over 3x the price of economy seats and can't be discounted through the cruise line. The first time she talked to the travel agent about that, the idea was ruled out.

Her problem with coming home from Prague is confusion about what her body time will be in Orlando. My guess is CET (ET + 6). So she is planning on reserving a hotel room in Orlando to make sure a room is available if we need it.

I hope this helps.

What I am saying is gertting lower airfare is not as simple as monitoring prices. It is 100% about AMA Waterways offering deals - their discounts on certain flights, not just airlines lowering airfare. If all I did was wait for airfare to drop, it would still be hundreds of dollars higher than $1,023. So Mom had to wait for the right cruise line discount.

Still wondering why you would want to Flyer.

What makes you think it is so simple to book these flights after I repeatedly stressed we had to get airfare through the cruise line to save money? The only thing that is simple about this is having all flights on one ticket.

Remember this is not about one trans-Atlantic flight. There are four flights on one ticket.

BTW she does not collect commission.

Globiliser, there is a big difference between "normal" and best" ways to do things. Just because most people don't get their ticket information in paper form, preferring to just receive an eticket, does not mean my mom should have done that. Our travel agent is very good at understanding her clients are individuals and every client is different, unlike some who always recommend the same itineraries and companies to people wiht similar travel interests. I would not like her if she insisted on booking a Viking cruise.

16 hours ago, FlyerTalker said:

Nope. likely hounded because the wonderful travel agent somehow insisted on a manual pickup of a piece of paper, rather than electronically transmitting the data to the client.

 

Welcome to the 1990s.

Why do people hound me for what the travel agent did? It is not my fault Mom had to pick up a document she could have printed at home.

BTW Mom does now how to use a printer. She did not know the information her TA wanted to pick up is only a printout of what we can see online.

Of course, all that matters now is I have all the information from Delta directly.

1 hour ago, brian1 said:

OMG, you guys are saying you've never used tickets since the days of BOAC LOL. Now your saying she needs one.

What is BOAC?

What I got was the website printout that includes my ticket number, record loocator,, and flight numbers, etc.

6 hours ago, Globaliser said:

It's not a ticket, as we keep telling you.

That is why I called them ticket papers instead of just tickets.

Why Flyer? What is the problem wiht everyone here?

I don't know about NCL Air, but got a huge airfare discount by booking flights through Ama Waterways instead of on my own. If it is possible to book a flight that arrives the day before your cruise through NCL you can ask them if they have any deals.

It is just a personaL preference to have layover durations written on the ticket.

There us nothing odd or bizarre about the way my travel agent does business with my mom. She booked the tickets with an AMA Waterways ticket agnet on a second line, talking to her while keeping that person on hold, to make sure we don't miss outt on the absolute best possible airfare for this trip without a tight layover where we go through immigration, customs, and security before finding the next gate  How is doing that being a bad travel agent?

Why do people htink just because the travel agent told Mom to pick up a printout of the flight itinerary on Delta's website she's a bad travel agent? That's all it is - the confirmation number, passenger names, flght numbers, itinerary, assigned seats, and aircraft types.

As for not seeing layover times, it should be obvious I was talking about the duration of those connections.

Update: The etravel agent called Mom on Saturday morning to report she can pick up the ticket papers on Monday. Here it is:

Tuesday, June 11

Airline: KLM

MCO Departure: 7:38 p.m.

Wednesday, June 12

AMS Arrival: 10:40 a.m.

Airline: KLM

AMS Departure: 2:25 p.m.

BUD Arrival: 4:20 p.m.

Monday, June 24

Airline: Delta

PRG Departure: 1:40 p.m.

JFK Arrival: 4:50 p.m.

Airline: Delta

JFK Departure: 7:29 p.m.

MCO Arrival: 10:46 p.m.

Seats are assigned for all flights except AMS - BUD, which the travel agent said nobody can reserve yet. We can do that later. The document does not specify layover durations, but there is no hurry at JFK.

Have you checked any other layover airports? You could try AMS (Amsterdam) as a connecting airport on a single ticket.

1 hour ago, terry&mike said:

You wrote, "the tickets will arrive next week". I find this odd as there are not paper tickets any longer. You should be able to access the reservation online immediately with a Record Locator. 

I dont know what the problem is, but from what I heard the record locator part apparently is never immediate for the cruise line.