Experience booking air with cruiseline.

[JVilleGal]

I would say "booking" is far different from actually "flying" as the poster in #24 is reporting. They may well have had a breeze in booking!

[xpcdoojk]

I know this probably won't be popular, but we have travelled to Europe a lot over the last 30ish years. A river cruise is a really great way to travel, same room every night new city. Awesome! If your cruise can't happen... that sucks, but rent a car, and you are in Europe awesome!!! Some places I wouldn't do in a car, but still lots of choices. Things are relatively close, the days behind the wheel are not bad. I would be unhappy if I was waiting for a holiday and I was told my flight and my cruise was cancelled. That would suck. Give me a couple of hours on the internet, I could come up with an awesome itinerary.

 

jc

[AirGorilla]

We recently returned from a Tauck river cruise on the Rhine and Moselle Rivers. To my surprise, Tauck saved us more than 30% vs. the prices on the DL website. We were able to specify the exact flights that we wanted: ATL-AMS and ZRH-ATL nonstops. I realize this may not work for all itineraries and US airports, but we were very pleased.

 

AG

[davidrw]

I I would be unhappy if I was waiting for a holiday and I was told my flight and my cruise was cancelled. That would suck. Give me a couple of hours on the internet, I could come up with an awesome itinerary.

 

jc

 

However, what if your cruise was running but all flights to Northern Europe were cancelled for a week (like when the Iceland Volcano grounded everything) or after 9/11 when the US grounded everything ?

[marco]

We've always booked cruise line air when doing river cruises. But then, our airport it JFK so we pretty much always end up on a non-stop if we're cruising out of a major city. We do do our homework and our own air was no better deal, and if we did our own air, airport transfers would have been on our dime, not included. In some cities, that could be close to $100 each way. On "oceanliner" European cruises, we NEVER even came close in price doing it on our own compared to what the cruise line offered, especially when doing a TA and only need one-way air. And for a $200-$300 pp difference (that's $400-$600 a couple) I'd put up with a two hour layover instead of a nonstop. But....you do need to do a bit of homework and if "their" air is a better deal, if it's not a non-stop and/or at times you'd rather not take, it's your call as to whether the less expensive option is worth the savings or not.

Edited August 5, 2015 by marco

[hiccups]

We booked with the cruise line to take advantage of a special they offered. I wasn't really familiar with booking internationally, especially with different arrival and departure cities. As it turned out, after we booked I did my own search and found the cruise quote was a little cheaper, and they booked us on the flights with the shortest total travel time--exactly what we would have chosen on our own. For us, it worked out.

[pinotlover]

The cruise line can offer one the price and the cruiser gets to choose. However, one should be forthright with the cruise line on what they actually want without the games. Some airlines will allow you to book basic economy and then go in and upgrade to PE or Comfort later on, with an upcharge. However, not all airlines will do that. In some cases the cruise lines buys the ticket in the lowest Class fare from which an upgrade may either be very expensive or even impractical. Some airlines will not allow any changes until flight check-in. Many of the problems I've heard is from people that booked the cheapest seat possible through the cruise line and then found they couldn't up grade and blamed the cruise line. Also sometimes the cruise lines books directly with the foreign carrier not the US carrier because they can get a better deal. For example, I booked a flight once with the cruise line BNA-NYC-COP. It was all on the UA program, so I thought I was dealing with UA on the flights. Not so, the cruise line only booked the domestic flights with UA and the international flights directly with Scandanavian Airlines. I could not upgrade or do anything different on the SA flights, in fact, SA would not even speak with me, in that the cruise line had bought the tickets, even though my name was on the ticket. If I wanted to make any change I had to have my TA call the cruise line that had to call the airline.

 

Moral of the stories is that sometimes things work out wonderfully, othertimes they don't. If one wants maximum control, book it yourself. If control is not a personal issue and they offer a deal, the give it a whirl.

 

I will add that a couple of us going to China next Spring attempted to use Uniworld's Air and the quotes we both received from them was nearly double the price for the same ticket on-line. I do not know if that is typical of them since it was my only attempt to use their service.