HAL Flights - When will they "ticket"?

[cabland]

My extended family and I are booked on a 7 night Alaska cruise on July 13th. We used a local travel agent and purchased the flights through HAL as well (presumably this is HAL's FlightEase program). Everything has been paid in full (cruise and flights) for about 6 weeks now, but I still show the flights (on American) have not yet ticketed (and thus I can't change seats, pay for upgraded seats, etc.).

 

My travel agent seemed to think they would not ticket until right before the cruise (i,e. 2 weeks before cruise), but here on CC I think I'm seeing stuff like 60 days out (which would be yesterday - or today as first business day), 45 days out or ???

 

Anyway, anyone have any recent info or at least experience with this. I'm always "uneasy" about flights until they actually "ticket".

 

Thanks!

[dfish]

I was told 45 days out. Have your TA give HAL a nudge on that.

[ZSandy25]

I would call HAL, or have your TA do it. We are sailing 6/18 and I also used the flight ease from HAL. By the way they were cheaper than the airlines I was looking at. I was able to secure our flight numbers and do the seat upgrades right away. I did the booking myself for,the flights. I was using points for the trip so that had to go thru my Credit Card TA.

I understand your anxiety about this, I would be chewing my nails.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[pschweig]

We used HAL’s Flight Ease program to reserve flights for June 2018. I paid for the tickets last August. At that time, we were issued ticket numbers. I do not have a “ticket” but I do have a ticket number for each passenger. BTW, we used a TA from our credit card company,

[Hlitner]

I believe the ticketing on Flex fares is not until 45 days before the flight. But the customer can ask to have it ticketed at any time prior to 45 days which means they have to pay for the flight and its no longer flexible. The airlines also have their own rules about when they will let you do things (such as get seats) on their own web sites. For example, we recently did a cruise air booking with American but we were able to go onto AA's web site and select seats more then 6 months in advance. We think its because we were booking Business Class and that gets you earlier access.

 

Hank

[drowelf]

This thread is quite interesting to read. I'm using Flight Ease for the first time and I was able to add my reservations to my United Account as soon as I made the reservation. I was able to do the seat assignments within days of making the reservation. In fact I've even changed our seats several times, as the short part of the flight has had several aircraft swaps already. They don't have a ticket number as yet and I don't expect them to until I make final payment next week. Then we will see what changes.

 

Cheers,

[cabland]

Interesting reading about the variations on this. I do wonder if it has something to do with the specific airline. Most of us are flying on American, but my sister is coming in on Air Canada. her flight appeared to ticket after a few weeks, while the rest of ours still show as ticket pending on American's website (we have record locators and seat assignments, but can't change anything on the AA site).

 

Holland America was cheaper by about $45/ticket - perhaps not worth it to me in the future, but in this case there are 9 of us travel so it does make a difference.