Princess airfare

[bostoncruisergirl]

Hi! Looking for some advice hope you can help...

 

We are looking at taking a cruise on Tahititan Princess next September and price is one of the factors so right now I'm trying to figure out pricing/flights.

 

How can I tell on the Princess website how much the airfare would be for us? I went on and selected the trip and selected stateroom category but the next screen was "book now" and I was afraid that would actually book us on the cruise and we aren't quite ready for that, any help on that?

 

When you book airfare through Princess how specific can you be about flight times? The cruise boards on a Monday (but doesn't leave Tahiti until tuesday) and the absolute earliest we'd be able to fly out from Boston would be Sunday as we're getting married Saturday.:D

 

Thank you!

[Bonnie&Rob]

My experience with Cruiseline air is that it is not flexible. The cruise lines pick up 'blocks' of seats, and put you on whatever is available. For us, they were flying us from Boston through 2 stops to Florida. As it is only a 3 hour flight with plenty of direct routes available, it didn't make sense for us.

 

Having said that, we ALWAYS fly in the day before at least so that we don't have to worry about a late flight and missing the ship. If you can fly out on Sunday for a Monday boarding you should be OK. Hopefully we won't be having winter weather in Sept next year!

[spongerob]

Why don't you call a travel agent, or try another on-line pricing web site? You won't have to commit to purchasing until the very last minute. When we booked Tahiti (later cancelled) Princess air was priced very attractively from LA since they use charter flights from LA to Papeete. It would have been a little cheaper for us to book our own flights to LA.

[Druke I]

As noted above, Princess often uses charters to Tahiti.

 

There are not an awful lot of scheduled flights to choose from, so deviations might not be a good choice.

 

When we flew there, 11-03, we used Princess air, it was a charter, and pretty bad.

 

Subsequent to that time, I'm told they dropped that company (don't recall their name, but they used old Lufthansa jets) and used more scheduled flights.

[spongerob]

Michael, we were scheduled to fly on an Air Tahiti Nui charter. I remember all the complaints about the Omni charters a couple years ago. ATN was a huge improvment according to those in the know.

 

BostonCruiseGirl - something else you might want to research is the cost of tours and trinkets. French Polynesia is a very expensive place to visit. You can save some money by looking into private tours. I know when Toto finds this thread she'll be able to give the scoop on everything.

[Pam in CA]

Flying from Boston to FLL is a very different kettle of fish than flying from Boston to Tahiti. As has been stated, there aren't a lot of airlines or options to/from Tahiti regardless of whether you use Princess air or book it on your own. If your cruise is an international open-jaw, i.e., flying to one destination and returning from another, you might as well stick with Princess air. It's usually less-expensive than doing it on your own.

 

Your best bet is to check with your TA. They can give you the cost options and comparisons.

[donna5]

Out of LAX, Princess is using air Tahiti Nui. It was around $880 I believe. This was just this last October. In 2003 we also did Princess air and it was ATN there(we had a precruise) and Charter back. Since our 2003 tahiti cruise we had been checking air prices to Tahiti. Never is there a air sale when there is a cruise. Also ATN now has air out of New York. It might be worth your while to see what it would cost (doing an air deviation) and asking for Princess air on ATN from NYC. Or checking the prices yourselft for air out of NYC on ATN. There were some New Jersey girls on our ATN flight(PPT-LAX) and they didn't get PPT-NYC.

[ssbeagle]

Hi! Looking for some advice hope you can help...

 

We are looking at taking a cruise on Tahititan Princess next September and price is one of the factors so right now I'm trying to figure out pricing/flights.

 

When you book airfare through Princess how specific can you be about flight times? The cruise boards on a Monday (but doesn't leave Tahiti until tuesday) and the absolute earliest we'd be able to fly out from Boston would be Sunday as we're getting married Saturday.:D

 

Thank you!

 

The last time we went to Tahiti we used Princess air from LAX. From Pensacola we booked our own air to LAX a day earlier and stayed in an airport hotel at a fantastic cheap price ($69 for Marriott). It worked out to be cheaper that way than using Princess air all the way.