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Looking for a flight Oct 2019 to Copenhagen for a cruise. Know flight schedules are not out yet. Very unexperienced in travel abroad. Icelandic airlines has good prices, not familiar at all with airline. Air France also. are these good choices, or independent airlines that I should not go with. Looking at business Class. Only one way needed. Both their websites are not that easy to navigate for me like others. lol sure it is old age lane problem.

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Icelandair is known for often having somewhat more affordable tickets and if I'm not mistaken, their fare rules allow you to build in a stopover in Reykjavik. However, I don't think they're members of any of the big airline alliances, so you may not be able to get rerouted on a different/partner airline if you have long delays/cancellation.

 

 

 

Air France on the other hand, is a member of Sky Team, which also includes Delta and KLM among others. This greatly improves not only rerouting options when things turn upside down, but allows you to utilize their partners to book a trip on one ticket flying in or out of a far greater number of cities than Icelandair. Their hub is Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, which is very large and spread out over multiple buildings, and can be intimidating to infrequent travelers.

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Looking for a flight Oct 2019 to Copenhagen for a cruise. Know flight schedules are not out yet. Very unexperienced in travel abroad. Icelandic airlines has good prices, not familiar at all with airline. Air France also. are these good choices, or independent airlines that I should not go with. Looking at business Class. Only one way needed. Both their websites are not that easy to navigate for me like others. lol sure it is old age lane problem.

 

Also take a look at flying from YVR (Vancouver, BC). Sometimes you can save as much as half flying out of Canada.

 

One time flying from Seattle to my destination round trip in business was $9000. When I looked at flying out of YVR (same airline, same connecting cities) the RT flt was only $4600. That more than offset the $250 to fly to YVR and a hotel stay. (Hotel is inside the airport at YVR)

 

This does complicate things a little.

Fly to YVR, collect luggage, stay overnight, recheck luggage the next day to fly to Europe. But,, for $3000 in savings,, what's a little time.

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Also, be aware that the airline you are looking at and some of the other low cost airlines that you may consider,,, not all Business classes are the same.

 

Iceland air (according to http://www.seatguru.com) does not have seats that lie back and make into beds. Their seats are only labeled as "recliners"

Condor labels theirs as Lie Flat Angle, Which, for me in the past, meant I could never get comfortable because I kept sliding down to the bottom.

 

I did a quick look at PDX to CPG in June of next year one way.

The big name legacy carriers with true lie flat beds and business class service was about $8K. From Vancouver, the prices were about $2.5K

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I don't know which cruise line you are sailing but check their air prices. (Air2Sea) with Royal and Celebrity. Good for one way prices for TAs.

 

I have found flying out of Seattle has better prices. Too early still for next October.

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Of course it's too early and of course you should look at cruise line air programs; they can often obtain better prices on one-way itineraries than you'd get booking through the airlines.

 

I would try to find a one-stop alternative in order to minimize time spent changing planes. From PDX, the only nonstop service to Europe is on Delta to Amsterdam; they codeshare with Air France and KLM, but the it will be a Delta plane. From Amsterdam you'd fly on KLM to Copenhagen. The virtue of this route is that you'll get plenty of time to sleep on Delta's flat beds over the water. Other one-stop routes, such as Portland to Chicago or Newark, connecting to SAS to Copenhagen, will mean your overnight flight will be much shorter, thus your time to sleep will be reduced.

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Of course it's too early and of course you should look at cruise line air programs; they can often obtain better prices on one-way itineraries than you'd get booking through the airlines.

 

I would try to find a one-stop alternative in order to minimize time spent changing planes. From PDX, the only nonstop service to Europe is on Delta to Amsterdam; they codeshare with Air France and KLM, but the it will be a Delta plane. From Amsterdam you'd fly on KLM to Copenhagen. The virtue of this route is that you'll get plenty of time to sleep on Delta's flat beds over the water. Other one-stop routes, such as Portland to Chicago or Newark, connecting to SAS to Copenhagen, will mean your overnight flight will be much shorter, thus your time to sleep will be reduced.

 

The other one-stop option is Air Canada. During the summer Air Canada has a Portland to Toronto flight. Air Canada goes daily from Toronto to Copenhagen. If your traveling outside of the summer, then it would need to connect in Vancouver and Toronto. Air Canada premium economy is on part with Icelandic business. Air Canada business is the flat bed option.

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And of course at this stage you have plenty of time to look into your frequent-flyer reward ticket options. Even if you don't have any miles with a FF program, you can often earn a good chunk thru credit card sign-up bonuses, and even purchasing miles can provide a good value if there's a promotion running.

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The other one-stop option is Air Canada. During the summer Air Canada has a Portland to Toronto flight. Air Canada goes daily from Toronto to Copenhagen. If your traveling outside of the summer, then it would need to connect in Vancouver and Toronto. Air Canada premium economy is on part with Icelandic business. Air Canada business is the flat bed option.

They're traveling in October, but even if they could use the Toronto option, they'd still have the issue of a short overnight flight across the Atlantic.

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They're traveling in October, but even if they could use the Toronto option, they'd still have the issue of a short overnight flight across the Atlantic.

 

Looks like Air Canada still has flights on some days of the week between Portland and Toronto this year.

 

Most options between North America and Scandinavia will involve an overnight flight. If I was coming from the US I would be happier going through Toronto instead of New York or Chicago.

 

They have not published their flights for Oct 2019, so you will have to wait a few months.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Icelandair is known for often having somewhat more affordable tickets and if I'm not mistaken, their fare rules allow you to build in a stopover in Reykjavik. However, I don't think they're members of any of the big airline alliances, so you may not be able to get rerouted on a different/partner airline if you have long delays/cancellation.

 

 

 

Air France on the other hand, is a member of Sky Team, which also includes Delta and KLM among others. This greatly improves not only rerouting options when things turn upside down, but allows you to utilize their partners to book a trip on one ticket flying in or out of a far greater number of cities than Icelandair. Their hub is Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, which is very large and spread out over multiple buildings, and can be intimidating to infrequent travelers.

 

Unless there have been great changes with Air France (VERY RUDE) and changing planes in Paris (3 hours & 20 min.) avoid this mix like at all cost (almost as bad as coming home to Boston almost). Went from Boston to Paris to Copenhegen for a TA and if a nice man with a cart didn't see us running would not have made our connection. He picked us up as the gate was a standard 20 min. walk from customs and they were calling our names when we were still at customs (jerk never even looked at our passports to busy talking). Would pass on a trip if we ever had to go through here or use Air France (which I goofed for Vancover and used them again dumb move) lesson learned.

 

Hear good things with Iceland Air but haven't used them yet.

 

 

Wish you luck in your search just our bad experience I'm sure for every 10 bad there is a good one out there.

 

Safe travels.

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Unless there have been great changes with Air France (VERY RUDE) and changing planes in Paris (3 hours & 20 min.) avoid this mix like at all cost (almost as bad as coming home to Boston almost). Went from Boston to Paris to Copenhegen for a TA and if a nice man with a cart didn't see us running would not have made our connection. He picked us up as the gate was a standard 20 min. walk from customs and they were calling our names when we were still at customs (jerk never even looked at our passports to busy talking).

 

While CDG is still not my favorite airport to connect in, yes it HAS improved! A few years ago there was major construction detours within terminals and poor signage. I flew through on both ends of a trip last October and found it much improved. Went through again yesterday returning from Prague enroute to Atlanta...we made our connection of only about an hour and 20 min, and that was with my 90 year old father in law who cannot walk particularly quickly. I would recommend longer, but we managed a restroom break and still got to the gate before they started boarding. Same for my flights last Oct, that had connections of 1:20 or less.

 

I don't understand your customs comment though. Flying BOS-CDG-CPH you would only have immigration (passport check) at CDG; no customs until CPH, and in most European countries customs is a non-event.

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  • 2 weeks later...
While CDG is still not my favorite airport to connect in, yes it HAS improved! A few years ago there was major construction detours within terminals and poor signage. I flew through on both ends of a trip last October and found it much improved. Went through again yesterday returning from Prague enroute to Atlanta...we made our connection of only about an hour and 20 min, and that was with my 90 year old father in law who cannot walk particularly quickly. I would recommend longer, but we managed a restroom break and still got to the gate before they started boarding. Same for my flights last Oct, that had connections of 1:20 or less.

 

I don't understand your customs comment though. Flying BOS-CDG-CPH you would only have immigration (passport check) at CDG; no customs until CPH, and in most European countries customs is a non-event.

 

Sorry it was to check our passports, my error in terms. Thanks you for the information this airport has made improvements that is good information to have.

Have a great day.

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, SAS21 said:

Has anyone used Norwegian Airlines? Prices are really good.

 Prices are good because they are a "Budget" airline.

If you go into it with all the knowledge, weigh the pro's and con's and make that decision,,, then they can be a very good option.

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7 hours ago, SAS21 said:

Prices are really good.

 

5 hours ago, klfrodo said:

Prices are good because they are a "Budget" airline.

 

It looks like prices may be good because they're below cost! :classic_biggrin:

 

See https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2018/10/24/winter-is-coming-for-low-cost-airlines-will-norwegian-survive/#2a96d8c46f78

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7 hours ago, SAS21 said:

Has anyone used Norwegian Airlines? Prices are really good.

Also check the cost of seat reservation, booking, and luggage. Also check luggage weight allowance - excessive weight might be very expensive at check in.

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2 hours ago, FlyerTalker said:

Caveat Emptor.

Yes, and many does use flight search engines to find the cheapest possible flight - select what they believe is the best option ending up paying a high price.

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14 hours ago, SAS21 said:

Has anyone used Norwegian Airlines? Prices are really good.

 

The only four people I know who used Norwegian longhaul did so for the first time this year and will probably be their last.

 

All of them encountered swaps from newer Dreamliner aircraft to older aircraft because of issues with Rolls Royce engines on the 787s.

 

All flights were operated by Wamos Air, a company that don't have scheduled flights but lease their aircraft out to carriers. One flight was on a very elderly 747 that had seen better days. My friend and his wife said it was the worst longhaul flight they ever took, and one respected blogger online described his Wamos 747 experience as "Junkyard Air". The Wamos flights my brother and his girlfriend took were on Airbus A330s which they described as "extremely basic" and "a trial", even by his very unfussy airline standards.

 

My brother and his girlfriend had tried to switch from these to other flights which weren't Wamos Air but Norwegian were not very helpful and they were informed of these swaps just a couple of weeks before travel, so getting refunded and switching to an alternative airline at that stage was significantly more expensive.

 

The RR engines issues won't be a permanent thing (although I don't know when DY will no longer need these substitute/ACMI carrier assistance) but Norwegian rely entirely on the 787 aircraft which has been blighted by recurring issues since introduction to service.

Edited by fbgd
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