Oceania OLife Airlines

[mbible]

My wife and I have never sailed Oceania (Platinum with Princess) but we are considering a cruise in 2018 using the OLife option.

 

I am interested on how the air option works. When do you know which airline is the carrier? Is there the ability to upgrade to premium economy directly with the airlines?

 

thanks in advance

[LHT28]

If you do not pay the deviation fee to arrive early or stay later than the cruise dates then it will be about 75 days out when you get the flight details

If you do the deviation you can work with O & choose the flights you want starting about 270 days out

Once you come to an agreement on the flights then you will pay the $175 PP non refundable deviation fee ..on certain flights you may also incur an upcharge this will all be disclosed before you make a decision

You can also take the air credit & book your own air

 

Best to compare all options before deciding

There are many threads discussing the deviation process

Upgrading to PE will depend on the fare class O uses for your ticket

[mbible]

Thanks. Exactly the info I needed. Must say I think Princess Air much more passenger friendly but I have not actually used Oceania before so I'm probably biased.

 

Thanks again

[jsjs]

We have booked our first Oceania cruise for November 2017 from Venice to Miami. Once we had made our final payment, our TA was able to book our flights with Oceania. We are flying early because we've never been to northeastern Italy before and we are flying into Bologna rather than Venice as part of our deviation (at no extra charge). In addition, we added the flight from/to our home city to the gateway airport. The additional fare for that was quite reasonable.

 

I would like to pre-select our seats and upgrade to the seats with more legroom for the overseas flight. Our TA has been told that this cannot be done until after Oceania has issued the tickets which happens anytime after 60 days before departure. Our TA will be contacting Oceania at the 60 day point to get this organized.

 

On another thread on this topic, people have posted that they have been able to do seat selection and upgrades directly on the airline website once the tickets our issued. We will be flying Air Canada and it appears that if the flights were not booked on their website, you cannot make these changes yourself.

 

So far, so good but we'll see how it all works out in the end.

[YoHoHo]

I would like to pre-select our seats and upgrade to the seats with more legroom for the overseas flight. Our TA has been told that this cannot be done until after Oceania has issued the tickets which happens anytime after 60 days before departure. Our TA will be contacting Oceania at the 60 day point to get this organized.

 

On another thread on this topic, people have posted that they have been able to do seat selection and upgrades directly on the airline website once the tickets our issued. We will be flying Air Canada and it appears that if the flights were not booked on their website, you cannot make these changes yourself.

As you wrote, your tickets have not been issued and also seats cannot be booked until tickets have been issued

I think that is your issue with A/C that the tickets have not yet been issued.

 

You've paid in full so you can request that O issue the tickets then see if you can get the seats book on A/C.

 

If this is no longer true or not accurate I know (and hope) I'll be corrected.

 

I have had trouble booking seats on A/C and have been successful. Others here reported no problems when I did have. So.... YMMV

 

Also this seat booking procedure is under the airlines control. For example earlier this year AA allowed buying seats even with the lowest category fare and then changed it just as I was trying to book seats.

[LHT28]

We have booked our first Oceania cruise for November 2017 from Venice to Miami. Once we had made our final payment, our TA was able to book our flights with Oceania. We are flying early because we've never been to northeastern Italy before and we are flying into Bologna rather than Venice as part of our deviation (at no extra charge). In addition, we added the flight from/to our home city to the gateway airport. The additional fare for that was quite reasonable.

 

I would like to pre-select our seats and upgrade to the seats with more legroom for the overseas flight. Our TA has been told that this cannot be done until after Oceania has issued the tickets which happens anytime after 60 days before departure. Our TA will be contacting Oceania at the 60 day point to get this organized.

 

On another thread on this topic, people have posted that they have been able to do seat selection and upgrades directly on the airline website once the tickets our issued. We will be flying Air Canada and it appears that if the flights were not booked on their website, you cannot make these changes yourself.

 

So far, so good but we'll see how it all works out in the end.

If you are paid in full ask that your air flights are ticketed NOW

You do not have to wait once you are paid up

The TA did not have to wait until final payment to book flights with a deviation

you can do it starting at 270 days out

[golfguyhhi]

Don't know if this helps or not:

We used O Air one-way ATL-BCN last November. I told my TA which flights I wanted and the seats I wanted. When O called at 75 days they offered one routing, my TA asked about the one I wanted. They said yes. She told them the seats I wanted and when the tickets were issued, they were for our desired seats. She also gave O our FF numbers and they were attached to the tickets and the computer records at Delta so we got credit for the miles, too.

 

By the way, we asked O for a price to upgrade to Business Class when we first booked our passage. They came back with a figure of $1,700 per person, which, even with the air credit we could have received, was about $2,000. under what I would have had to spend if I'd booked them myself. We took their offer.

 

 

This past July we went to Heathrow, roundtrip, on American through Charlotte. Same story as the previous, except there was no need to ask for a different routing as there was only 1 and O was forced to offer it (that sounds a little harsh -- they were pleased to offer it). TA already had the seats we wanted and our FF numbers, so when the tickets were issued, all that was in place. This time O's price was just about exactly what AA was charging for the flights, so nothing gained, nothing lost.

 

 

We're doing the one-way ATL-BCN again in December and the TA is all set up with the info she needs to handle that transaction like the last 2 -- and O's price for the BC upgrade is once again $1,700 so we grabbed that in a heartbeat.

 

So we still have not needed to request (or accept) a deviation.