Paul Gauguin: Airlines and Insurance

[gailellen12]

I am thinking about booking a Paul Gauguin cruise this summer. They are offering free air from L.A. and I am thinking about doing my own domestic air and doing an overnight near LAX. Can you inquire far ahead about which flight they will book you on from LAX to Tahiti? Are the flights coordinated with their sailing time from Papeete? This might determine my plan; as I am coming in from Philly. Also, if you have traveled with them, do you take their insurance or cover it with a policy you found elsewhere? With needing to pay a single supplement this will be quite an investment of travel $ and I am thinking insurance is probably a good idea. Their policy seems very expensive, but, then again, I am not that familiar with travel insurance. Thanks for any input. Gail ;)

[Talisker92]

Dear Gail,

I would suggest calling PG and asking them. As I recall, the Air Tahiti Nui flights vary by the day of the week.

As far as travel insurance, we believe it is a must.

[Emdee]

Hi Gail,

Look on the ATN website and you will know the flight timings for that day in question. In june we have been put on the 4.25 evening flight and will land at 11pm or so. I believe they are holding the ship for that arrival. Some days there is a 1.30 flight and we used to always be put on that flight in the past.

I also noticed that they sometimes will have an overnight flight landing at 5 am or so.

 

We got our flight details today ie about 6 months in advance allowing us to book our flights from Toronto.

 

When booking return flights ATN can be one or two hours late and if you have to change a terminal to return home it can take quite a while so make sure you have enough time.

 

Hope this helps.

Miriam

[Aunty Pat]

Four things to keep in mind about your flight:

• Don’t book your domestic flight until you know for sure which Air Tahiti Nui flight you will be on.
  
• Air Tahiti Nui has a reputation of changing their flight schedules every few months.
  
• Paul Gauguin doesn’t select your flights until you’ve made final payment. If they put you on the 4:30PM flight they willfly you in the night before and put you up at an LAX hotel. You’ll arrive in Papeete at 10:30pm & they will take you straight to the ship. If you are on the 11:30 pm flight you willl have time to fly from the east coast on the day you leave LA and arrive in Papeete very early in the morning and they will include a day room in your package before taking you to the ship.
  
• They wanted $400/person to add a domestic ticket to my itinerary. Since I’m flying to LA from San Francisco it was more than double my Virgin America ticket.
  

My recommendation is to find out how much they want for including your domestic ticket. If it is comparable to air fare at the time of final payment have them include it in your package. Then the problem of how to make the 2 flights work is all theirs to solve. It is my understanding that if a hotel is needed in LA to make the flights work they will include it in your package.

 

By it, but compare it with the cost of 3rd party insurance before you do. We bought ours from Travelex.

 

Aunty Pat

 

 

Barefoot Windjammer - Phantom ‘81

K&D German Rhine Line ‘84

NCL - Norway ’85, Pride of America ’05, Southward ’87, Star ’97 & ‘05, Starward ’92, Sun ’02 & Windward ’93

RCCL - Song of America ’89 & Oasis of the Seas ’10

American Hawaiian - Independence ‘98

HAL - Volendam ’99, Noordam ’06, Oosterdam ’07 & ‘09, Statendam ’02 & ‘08, Prinsendam ’03 & ’06, Westerdam ‘09 & Zuiderdam ’04, ’06 & ’07

Carnival - Spirit ‘05

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Cruise West - Yorktown Clipper ‘06

Princess - Golden Princess ‘07

A & K - East Queen ‘07

Cunard - QM2 ’08

Crystal – Serenity ‘09

Lindblad Expeditions – Sea Bird ‘10

Future Cruises:

Paul Gauguin – February 9, 2011

[MightyQuinn]

Paul Gauguin doesn’t select your flights until you’ve made final payment. If they put you on the 4:30PM flight they will fly you in the night before and put you up at an LAX hotel. You’ll arrive in Papeete at 10:30pm & they will take you straight to the ship. If you are on the 11:30 pm flight you willl have time to fly from the east coast on the day you leave LA and arrive in Papeete very early in the morning and they will include a day room in your package before taking you to the ship..

I assume that the inclusion of these pre-cruise extras - overnite in LAX hotel, day room in Papeete - are only provided if PGC also arranges your domestic air to/from LAX. We have LAX-PPT "free" air through them & were put on the 4:30 pm flight. We then made our own arrangements for our LAX connections. We didn't get any of the extras that you mentioned, except a day room at the Radisson post-cruise. But we did get our ATN flight schedule about 5 months before sailing & well before we made final payment.

[Alberta Couple]

Be prepared for flight changes. We booked and had our plans all made and ATN later changed the flights completely which totally rearranged the plans that we had made. In the end it cost us more money.

[FlightMedic555]

We had the free air with the 1:30 pm flight out of LAX. They never offered a free overnight at LAX but then again, we never asked and booked our own air from NYC.

 

We bid via priceline and for $45 got the Crown Royal Hotel for the night prior to the flight to PPT at LAX which has a free shuttle.

[trav25]

We booked our own air from LAX on Air France which was significantly cheaper than other airlines. PG gave us money off for our own flights. We know we are taking a chance with air cancellations, etc so we booked 3 days ahead and are staying at a B&B in Moorea with a private beach (3 nights in the B&B was cheaper than 1 night garden room at the Hilton). We'll see how it goes. If the B&B is awful, we can always go to a hotel. The AF flight leaves early on the day we get back to port so we are staying one night in Papeete to acclimate to a non-moving vessel before the long flight back to LAX. AF flight going to start the trip is a red-eye but going home is not. Going ahead will allow us to adjust. Coming back home in the day allows us to go to work sooner when we get home. We looked into Hawaiian too. Honolulu is nice place to overnight. :) but more expensive.