Viking Air ticketing flights

Can we request early ticketing for our flights? Especially as we have paid for the cruise awhile ago? What have people's experience been? My TA said that the flight has to be ticketed before we can request upgrads but I wonder.

Mia

Dear marylovestotravel,

You sure can! Please have your Travel Agent call or email us at TellUs@vikingcruises.com so that we can arrange this for you.

Looking forward to cruising with you.

Best regards,

Viking Cruises

Can we request early ticketing for our flights? Especially as we have paid for the cruise awhile ago? What have people's experience been? My TA said that the flight has to be ticketed before we can request upgrads but I wonder.

 

Mia

Hi, does this also apply to UK customers who have flights included.

Does it also apply to included flights from Canada to Miami?

Dear sherrar & Nicci1,

We should be able to assist with early ticketing in both of your situations, as long as your cruises are paid in full.

To provide a definite answer, however, we would appreciate the opportunity to review your bookings. If you’re interested, please send your reservation information to us at TellUs@vikingcruises.com.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond. We hope to hear from you.

Best regards,

Viking Cruises

Hi, does this also apply to UK customers who have flights included.

Does it also apply to included flights from Canada to Miami?

Thank you, Viking:D So nice to get a reply "Straight from the horses's mouth". Very appreciative of the cruisecritic membership but a nice concise answer is most welcome.

Mia

Completely agree - good to get an answer from the company.

A quick update for readers booking in the UK.

Following a very prompt, pleasant and positive exchange of messages with Viking it seems that early ticketing is available in the UK too. The key factors are that the cruise must already have been paid in full and, of course, flights will be non-refundable. Also extra charges may incur with any changes.

This is yet another example of Viking's very customer focused approach :)

thanks for that photopro2

I guess I need to decide whether to pay in full sooner so that I can get the flight I want and any upgrade I might decide on.

Sailing in September 2018 - final payment due 30th June 2018 - Flights will be out end of September ish i think

Thanks for starting the thread Mia,

I would never have thought to ask about early ticketing without reading your post and the excellent response that followed from Viking.

We now have a nice pair of seats booked on the upperdeck for our BA A380 flight and so are looking forward to that part of the trip too :D

Thanks for starting the thread Mia,

I would never have thought to ask about early ticketing without reading your post and the excellent response that followed from Viking.

We now have a nice pair of seats booked on the upperdeck for our BA A380 flight and so are looking forward to that part of the trip too :D

Hi photopro2,

The Mills of the Gods are still churning for us. Have passed on the Viking info to our TA because we were interested in upgrading to Premium Economy. It turns out that for our itinerary, Air Canada wants $100 per segment, which turns into a very reasonable $300. Viking wanted almost $1000!!! So our ticket agent has requested our tickets and we are just waiting for them so that we can see what we can do on our end. I will say that I am very disappointed that Viking's upgrade charge is so much higher. I just hope that we can get something as this is very dependent on the tickets being through Air Canada (and maybe Lufthansa) and not changed to something else. So basically something which should be simple has gotten very complicated!

Does the upper deck of BA mean you have an upgrade? Do you mind sharing your process?

Mia

Hello Mia,

Sorry to hear about the complications you are having.

The flight booking operation for us here in the UK seems to use a somewhat different process as our airfare is rolled in with the cruise price. In answer to your question we have economy tickets and seats. BA have the aircraft configured with pairs of seats on the top deck in economy and by having our flights ticketed well in advance we could make sure that we got two of those.

In fairness to Viking I suspect that some of the blame for the difficulty you are having rest with the airlines and is a result of the complicated rules, restrictions and costs to upgrade that are applied by the airline to different sorts of tickets.

Whatever the cause we wish you and your TA all the best in getting it sorted out.

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Hi photopro2,

We are UK customers too - couple of quick questions if you don't mind!

I notice you sail in March next year - did you arrange to pay your balance early so that you could get your air tickets early?

Did you sort out your seats or did your TA have to do it?

Thanks

The whole upgrade thing is a mess. Since Viking reasonably buys the low cost fares in bulk, many airlines have problems with upgrades. I just on my own as a Delta flyer upgraded the flight to Paris to Premium Economy on my Bordeaux cruise. But on the return flight, Air France disallows me from making any upgrade.

Conversely, 2 years ago on my Viking flight overseas, Air France sent me a last week email offering 2 First Class upgrades for $950, a bargain. Took it and even though it was 2 middle seats (beds) we slept comfortably on the trip over. Now wife can say she slept with two Frenchmen.

Hello Mia,

Sorry to hear about the complications you are having.

The flight booking operation for us here in the UK seems to use a somewhat different process as our airfare is rolled in with the cruise price. In answer to your question we have economy tickets and seats. BA have the aircraft configured with pairs of seats on the top deck in economy and by having our flights ticketed well in advance we could make sure that we got two of those.

In fairness to Viking I suspect that some of the blame for the difficulty you are having rest with the airlines and is a result of the complicated rules, restrictions and costs to upgrade that are applied by the airline to different sorts of tickets.

Whatever the cause we wish you and your TA all the best in getting it sorted out.

 

 

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We are traveling to Egypt in October. Our friends were able to book on British Air with Viking in business class but we had to book on our own to fly British Air Premium Economy which also meant we had to pay for Viking transfers from the airport to the hotel. You only get free transfers when you use Viking Air. I thought this was a little crazy.

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did you arrange to pay your balance early so that you could get your air tickets early?

Did you sort out your seats or did your TA have to do it?

Yes Sherrar, that is exactly what we did. We had not thought of this as a possibility until we read this thread.

We had already asked for and got the airline 'PNR' or 'Locator'code for our flights via our TA so we could look at the "manage my booking" section of the BA website and see our reservations.

However we were unable at that stage to book seat numbers as the site said that they would only be available when check in opened, by which time all the best seats would have been taken of course.

We contacted our TA, paid the balance on the cruise in full and asked them to ask Viking to ticket the flights. A few days later I checked the BA website again and discovered, as I had hoped, that the "manage my booking" section now had the seat reservation option available for us (at an extra charge as usual with BA) There was also a link to the AA site where we could reserve our seats on the connecting flights free, I love that AA still allows that!

Do note that you "lock yourselves down" to specific flights when they are ticketed so it is worth looking at what fights you might want to take and then asking via your TA if they are available from Viking.

In our case we opted to fly to Miami on the newer A380 which only operates the afternoon flight, overnight at Miami airport at our own expense then continue the next day. Viking set up these flights for us within the basic cruise price.

Overall I could not be happier with the service we have received :D

Glad you got it sorted photopolymer.

I will wait until flights are out and then try and follow your lead and see how we get on - fingers crossed and thanks for all the info.

I think the problem occurs when your book Viking Air through a TA. This is my fourth Viking cruise, we booked our air through Viking, but! we booked our upgrades through the airlines. So far we have used Air Canada, British Airways, Air France and we are

booked on United, Aegean and Lufthansa for our November cruise. We booked our up grades direct. Vikings upgrades seem to be extremely high:confused: I wonder why???

Happy cruising.

Hi Ruth,

We got a convoluted itinerary from Viking. Air Canada reservation going, but travelling on Lufthansa flights (I know, codeshare!) and then coming back with a Lufthansa reservation on an Air Canada flight. Are any of your flights in November in Lufthansa? Were you able to upgrade easily? So frustrated! This is the 1st time I've dealt with a TA and I find the process so slow.

Mia

I think the problem occurs when your book Viking Air through a TA. This is my fourth Viking cruise, we booked our air through Viking, but! we booked our upgrades through the airlines. So far we have used Air Canada, British Airways, Air France and we are

booked on United, Aegean and Lufthansa for our November cruise. We booked our up grades direct. Vikings upgrades seem to be extremely high:confused: I wonder why???

 

Happy cruising.

It does not always work that way, buying upgrades through the airlines.

This coming trip, I was able to do a limited upgrade (to Premium Economy only) on Delta but not allowed by Air France to do any upgrade. AF cites that my ticket (through Viking Air) is not eligible for any upgrade. I will check again at the last minute to see if this changes.

As I said before with the various types of low cost tickets Viking buys and chaotic airline polices, the situation is a mess.

Paid air plus fee of $50. My TA got the flights I wanted for the TA sailing March 27,2018. He said I should get the confirmation in a few days, or few weeks... Viking is negotiating with airlines for tickets for next year.

I am flying Delta and do want to upgrade to economy comfort for the BCN to ATL flight, if I am able.

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If you pay for Viking's "custom air," they will do more for your preferences, but this is not available for all itineraries.

A word of helpful info: if you do not like the seat assignments Viking air gives you, you CAN get on the actual airline web sites and change them yourself once you have the code for your reservation. Viking says you can't but it works!

We have changed to two adjacent aisle seats closer to the front (still in Economy) when Viking put us in middle/aisle near the back. We made our own changes on flights to/from Amsterdam (KLM), to Bergen (British Air via Heathrow), both legs to Budapest (KLM via Amsterdam) and from Prague via CDG (Air France). All were in/out of IAD (Washington Dulles) in the U.S. The key is to go to the ACTUAL airline site, not the U.S. codeshare airline. We were NOT able to see or change seats on our Prague to CDG leg, but it was short. MAKE THE CHANGES AS SOON AS YOU GET your reservations! That's about 90 days out, and there are usually better seats. Not sure if you could also upgrade or not, but you could try.

If you pay for Viking's "custom air," they will do more for your preferences, but this is not available for all itineraries.

 

A word of helpful info: if you do not like the seat assignments Viking air gives you, you CAN get on the actual airline web sites and change them yourself once you have the code for your reservation. Viking says you can't but it works!

 

We have changed to two adjacent aisle seats closer to the front (still in Economy) when Viking put us in middle/aisle near the back. We made our own changes on flights to/from Amsterdam (KLM), to Bergen (British Air via Heathrow), both legs to Budapest (KLM via Amsterdam) and from Prague via CDG (Air France). All were in/out of IAD (Washington Dulles) in the U.S. The key is to go to the ACTUAL airline site, not the U.S. codeshare airline. We were NOT able to see or change seats on our Prague to CDG leg, but it was short. MAKE THE CHANGES AS SOON AS YOU GET your reservations! That's about 90 days out, and there are usually better seats. Not sure if you could also upgrade or not, but you could try.

Good advice but again sometimes an airline will let you make changes and sometimes not. Try.

This site https://www.seatguru.com shows you the seat layout on your flight and rates seat locatlions

Timing for seat selection is a gamble. We booked FF miles on AirBerlin via an AA code share and on the AA site it said seat selection available on AA segments only no seat map for AB. AB site message comes up and said no seat selection allowed, seat map came up and was able to upgrade seats anyway. Other code shares I got different results depending on which record locator I used. Some of the airlines reserve the better seats for elite users and they don't show as available to the general public until the last few days. One way to anticipate this is to check for seats as a new booking vs. the booked change seat map. BA allowed me to select seats for a $75 upcharge plus seat premium about 60 days out. A few days before departure the offer changed to $75 no seat premium and included the economy plus section. They didn't allow you to see the seat map until after you paid and I don't believe you could see it again until check in.

BTW read carefully what is meant by Economy Plus, Premium Economy, Comfort Plus and it's word variations. It could mean upgrading from an economy seat that does not allow overhead storage to what was considered economy until last year, it could mean more leg room with better seats, it could be a separate section that also include meal upgrades, free luggage, priority boarding and even club access.

I think used car salesmen (my apologies) eventually find their way to airline marketing.

Frustrating....trying to compare apples to apples almost never works with airline ticketing anymore!