O air and $99 PE Questions

[llarsen]

Hello,

 

Just a little FYI. We have used O's air in the past, paying the air deviation to have a pre and post cruise stay and it worked out well paying the air deviation and additional cost for the flights we wanted.

 

Next June we have a cruise from Rome-Venice that we plan to do pre and post cruise stays and have the option for $99 Premium Economy upgrade which we have never had before.

 

We will be flying from California, most likely out of LAX and realize the PE is only for the International portion of the flights and we have to pay the upgrade fee each way.

 

Questions:

 

IS THE $99 PE AVAILABLE IF YOU DO AIR DEVIATION?

(I read somewhere here that it is only available if you do not deviate)

 

I DID A QUICK SEARCH AND SAW THAT KLM AND ALITALIA HAD A NONSTOP FROM LAX TO FCO (not that it will be available for our dates next year) BUT IF SO, WOULD THE $99 PE BE AVAILABLE SINCE IT IS NONSTOP AND STARTS IN THE US, AND DOES OCEANIA EVEN CONTRACT WITH THEM?

 

IF WE DECIDE TO PURCHASE OUR OWN AIR, IS THE PE MUCH MORE THROUGH THE AIRLINES THAN THE $99 PE OCEANIA OFFERS?

(We try to get lowest fares so we have never upgraded before, but the long cramped leg flights are getting to us)

 

DOES ANYONE HAVE EXPERIENCE/OPINION WITH KLM, SAS, NORWEGIAN AIR?

(I have seen some great prices out of LAX on these)

 

Thank you very much!

[LHT28]

Questions:

 

IS THE $99 PE AVAILABLE IF YOU DO AIR DEVIATION?

(I read somewhere here that it is only available if you do not deviate)

I hope so ..my TA said if they have seats on the flights then we will get PE for the day we deviate we do not sail until May 2018 though

 

 

DOES ANYONE HAVE EXPERIENCE/OPINION WITH KLM, SAS, NORWEGIAN AIR?

(I have seen some great prices out of LAX on these)

 

Thank you very much!

 

I have flown KLM from Canada & all was good

we booked Econ then a few months prior we upgraded to PE for about 80E

We also got lucky on one trip to upgraded to 1st at check in for a few hundred $$ ... worth it for us

 

YMMV

[Mura]

We used the PE upgrade on our flights to and from Copenhagen and Heathrow on our June cruise (CPH to Southampton) and yes, we deviated.

 

We used SAS on our June flight to CPH and it was very good. (Not as good as our first SAS flight in 1975 but that time they upgraded us to first class so it SHOULD have been better!). Also used KLM many years ago so I wouldn't want to vouch for it now. Have never used Norwegian.

 

To answer the other fare questions I think you'd need to do some pricing on your own.

[pinotlover]

Have flown SAS via O, a couple of years ago. Good airlines .Unless upgraded by O for the $99, you will find it difficult to upgrade to PE from O's bulk rate ticket. Mucho $$$s to do. If you want PE with O ask for the PE right off, don't try to upgrade later on your own. SAS had a sales chart, if the class of your economy ticket was X, then the cost to upgrade was Y. They would not negotiate, and even left some PE seats empty after having refused offers.

 

You can still get the $99 PE deal, if you take a deviation and go in early. O does seem to change its contracts with carriers, so have your TA ask O, which carriers they are currently using. If you look at the ad, where O was offering the $99 special, they talked about Air Canada, SAS, and one other line. Look at your offering.

 

PE seats, on international flights, often sell out quickly. I'm using Air Canada for our flight in June on the 787. There are only three rows of PE on that plane, and the flight going over sold out of PE probably before O's window of 270 days. We ended up booking BC for the flight over, and PE coming back on our own. I would not wait much past the 270 day window and hope to get a PE seat, especially on a non stop. I know of several that had to take additional stops to get the PE upgrade, which left them with another intra-Europe flight in economy.

[llarsen]

Thanks so much for your replies!

 

We will start checking air as soon as it's available around 1 year out from our trip and compare prices with what it is costing us through Oceania.

 

If we get it for under $1,300 it would be better to purchase air on our own because of the air deviation fees and any additional flight costs over what they would have given us.

 

We plan to fly from LAX-Rome and then from Milan-LAX (rather than Venice-LAX) on the return, as we plan to do a post stay in Varenna. Flying out of Milan sometimes is a little less than Venice, so we might be able to do better on our own. Just was hoping for that $99 air upgrade :-)

 

Also thank you for the SAS and KLM feedback, feel much better about looking at them now. They had some great fares when I put in some dates for this coming year.

 

:-)

[cruisemad75]

We've paid to upgrade to PE from Miami to Heathrow next November, using 'O's air and no deviation.

Cost to us on this side of the pond £299pp :(

Edited February 1, 2017 by cruisemad75

[su-arizona]

We purchased O PE upgrade for our last cruise and did deviation both pre and post cruise. The O $99 upgrade was substantially less than purchasing PE independently. On the regular economy O air, there's often very little difference in price if you book yourself or use O, but the same is not usually true of PE. Suggest you find the non-stop carrier you would like to use before booking through O - they tried several multi-stop routes for the PE before finally agreeing to the non-stop we wanted.