Air Plus

[QRB4539]

We will be using Air Plus for an upcoming cruise. We usually do our own airfare. My question is has anyone had success with upgrading seats?

We have privileges/status that get us premium economy for no extra fee when we fly on United. Has anyone had any success doing that?

Thanks in advance.

[Phillygirl3]

We booked a cruise with Viking and an Air Plus charge was added by our travel agent.  We are not even sure what Air Plus involves--would you mind explaining it?  Thanks so much, I appreciate your feedback.

[cocopico]

On 6/26/2019 at 7:08 PM, QRB4539 said:

We will be using Air Plus for an upcoming cruise. We usually do our own airfare. My question is has anyone had success with upgrading seats?

We have privileges/status that get us premium economy for no extra fee when we fly on United. Has anyone had any success doing that?

Thanks in advance.

I am by no means an expert on this, but the issue I encountered on upgrades of tickets purchased by Viking is that my airline (Delta) wouldn't allow upgrades until the tickets were actually purchased by Viking, and Viking typically waits to actually purchase the tickets until 60 days or so of the cruise.  I think you can ask them to purchase the tickets earlier, but my experience is that they will not purchase the tickets until you have paid in full for your cruise.  In our case, we bought a future cruise on board an existing cruise, which gave us extra time to pay for the full cruise (6 months out vs. time of booking) and we didn't want to have to pay the full cruise fare any earlier than necessary.  If you use Air Plus, you can have some input into the flights ultimately purchased by Viking on your behalf (assuming there are options -- my experience was that the flights I wanted were "not on their contract" and thus unavailable), but you need to check with your airline to determine at what point you can upgrade your seats.  It may or may not be worthwhile.  My sense is that many factors (airline, destination, time of purchase, etc.) go into the issue of whether you can successfully upgrade your Viking-purchased tickets, so talk to the Air Plus folks about all this before finalizing your tickets.  On one trip, we purchased Air Plus but because they could not accommodate us on the flights we wanted and could not price upgrades to Delta's Comfort Plus seats, they allowed us to cancel the Air Plus, refunded our $100 and we booked our tickets on our own. 

[cocopico]

26 minutes ago, Phillygirl3 said:

We booked a cruise with Viking and an Air Plus charge was added by our travel agent.  We are not even sure what Air Plus involves--would you mind explaining it?  Thanks so much, I appreciate your feedback.

If you use Viking included air, they will put you on the airline and flights they choose for you.  If you pay for Air Plus (usually $50 per person) you can have input into the airline and flights selected for you, provided those flights are on Viking's air contract.  Our experience has been that Viking usually puts you on pretty decent flights and airline choice is not really an issue because we fly out of Atlanta and know we are very likely to fly on Delta.  There is more information about Air Plus here:  https://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/my-trip/air-services/index.html

[Peregrina651]

58 minutes ago, Phillygirl3 said:

We booked a cruise with Viking and an Air Plus charge was added by our travel agent.  We are not even sure what Air Plus involves--would you mind explaining it?  Thanks so much, I appreciate your feedback.

 

Go back to your TA and ask why they put the charge on your bill. Ask them to explain why it is there and what benefits you will get. Air Plus is an optional charge, your option, not the TA's. 

 

It is up to you to decide if you want to use AirPlus.  Cocopico and many others are happy o let Viking do the choosing.  Others want to have a say in the selection process; I'm one of them. First, it allows you to choose your flight plan from among the available option. Second, it allows you to be among the first to choose and thus have more choices. Third, it allows you to avoid whatever it is you want to avoid in a flight. You can choose your flights just as soon as booking opens on the airlines, usually around 275 days or so out. 

 

If you are planning on arriving early and/or staying late, there will be additional charges for what they call a deviation along with the AirPlus  charge. 

 

In any case, get a good clear explanation from your travel agent. And have the charge removed if you decide you don't want to use it. 

 

 

[Phillygirl3]

Thanks, I did contact my travel agent as I have been told that after three cruises on Viking (and I assume that includes river cruises) that I am entitled to "Concierge Air."  Since this will be our 6th cruise with Viking, I am wondering why I would need "Air Plus" which sounds like it's the same thing.  In fact on one of my previous cruises, I called Viking to tell them that I was not happy with the flights that they assigned and they did change them to a better schedule as they told me that we were entitled to "Concierge Air."  I asked my TA to get back to me on this as I won't mind saving $100.  She is excellent, so I'm sure she will figure it out.

[Peregrina651]

I thought that Concierge Air ended not long after VO was launched. 

[cocopico]

18 hours ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

It is up to you to decide if you want to use AirPlus.  Cocopico and many others are happy o let Viking do the choosing.  Others want to have a say in the selection process; I'm one of them. First, it allows you to choose your flight plan from among the available option. Second, it allows you to be among the first to choose and thus have more choices. Third, it allows you to avoid whatever it is you want to avoid in a flight. You can choose your flights just as soon as booking opens on the airlines, usually around 275 days or so out. 

 

Just to clarify, like you I actually prefer to choose my own flights and would happily use Air Plus to do so.  For whatever reason, though, we've never had any luck getting our preferred flights with Air Plus.  I typically look at available flights out of Atlanta and can figure out which ones Viking will likely use in their included air.  If they are the flights I would pick anyway, I don't bother with Air Plus.  Our most recent cruise started in Rome and I saw that Delta only had one non-stop flight from Atlanta to Rome and figured Viking would use it.  Happily, they did.  I wanted to use Air Plus, though, because the included return flights from Athens departed at around 6:00 a.m. and I wasn't looking forward to a 3:00 a.m. disembarkation.  I also wanted to try and get a Delta flight from Athens through Amsterdam to Atlanta.  I talked to the Air Plus folks about alternate flights I had found that met my criteria but I kept getting "those flights aren't on our contract."  (I thought the whole point of Air Plus was to get to flights beyond their contract.)   Since we couldn't get our preferred flights, we cancelled the Air Plus and let Viking book the included flights.  We ended up on the 6:00 a.m. Air France flight out of Athens, with a four hour layover in Paris.  I would have gladly paid the $100 Air Plus fee to get the later departure on our preferred airline with our preferred connection in Amsterdam, but the Air Plus folks couldn't make that happen.  I do place a premium on getting the airline and itinerary I want, but so far I just haven't had much luck with Air Plus.  I'm starting to think that Delta isn't one of Viking's preferred airlines and being in Atlanta, Delta is really our only choice.  Because of that, we've used Viking's included air on two cruises, but independently bought our own tickets on the other three, generally at prices competitive with the Viking included air prices. 

[lackcreativity]

2 hours ago, cocopico said:

  I do place a premium on getting the airline and itinerary I want, but so far I just haven't had much luck with Air Plus.  I'm starting to think that Delta isn't one of Viking's preferred airlines and being in Atlanta, Delta is really our only choice.  Because of that, we've used Viking's included air on two cruises, but independently bought our own tickets on the other three, generally at prices competitive with the Viking included air prices. 

We have been really lucky with getting the exact flights we wanted since we learned about Viking Air Plus, but we usually fly out of Philadelphia, and American Airlines seems to be one of Viking's contract carriers. We would book flights on our own if we were not able to do so. On our upcoming river cruise from Paris to Zurich, we were able to get nonstop flights each way at reasonable times. On this particular cruise if they hadn't been able to use those flights we might have been in a tough spot as the cruise promotion was free airfare. I know we wouldn't pass that up, so I was glad to get the ones we wanted.