Air Suggestion for Americans flying to Barbados

[Hlitner]

I know there are some other folks who are planning on cruising on the Odyssey out of Barbados.  But there are very few flights between the USA and Barbados and most involve flights through MIA on American Airlines who has been canceling lots of flights including some to Barbados.

 

An alternate selection is a daily JetBlue non-stop flight between JFK and Barbados.  But folks should be forewarned that JetBlue does not normally show-up on most travel search engines (such as Kayak and Orbitz) nor are they normally used by Seabourn's own air site.  Keep in mind I am not specifically recommending JetBlue (a pretty popular airline) but simply pointing out the option.  The downside is that their daily flight does not get into Barbados until about 3:30pm and does not depart until nearly 5pm (which means a long day sitting around Barbados).

 

Hank

[Borna]

Agree, little choice flying between usa and barbados.  I wonder why seabourn chose barbados. Besides American flying between miami and bridgetown, barbados (bgi), jet blue flies ftom jfk or ewr to bgi, but there is no mint class to or from jfk.  We opted for the ewr to bgi flight because it has mint class, but it doesn’t operate daily. We were able to find bus class on American leaving barbados, but until the day after the cruise. 

[Navis]

Jet Blue also offers daily direct service to BGI from Boston and includes one Mint flight on Sat mornings. We just booked our flight for March 2022 for the Mint flights and got a really good deal (relatively speaking).  Folks north of NY metro area might want to look at BOS if that works for your travel plans.

 

There has also been discussions up here that United and Delta will also add daily direct service form BOS to BGI later this winter and through the spring break season so if you’re going this winter you might have even more options.

[cruiseej]

For us flying from the East coast of the US, it's a short enough flight that we're okay with coach seats. We can fly out of either PHL or EWR, but I opted for American because they have more flights and planes than Jet Blue; in the event of mechanical or weather disruptions, I think they're more likely to get us to/from the island than Jet Blue.

 

Jet Blue from Newark appears to be only one flight per week, on Saturdays. That would work for a cruise departing Sunday, but not for the return at all. So we'd have to drive or fly to JFK, which is more of a hassle for us than flying PHL-MIA-BGI. But for anyone who can easily do the trip via JFK (or Boston), the roundtrip fare on Jet Blue is, not surprisingly, a lot less expensive than American. 

[tv24]

Flying to Barbados from the West Coast of the US is a pain in the neck.  No easy way.  Has been a deal breaker for us when considering a Seabourn departure out of Barbados, especially Transatlantic.

[cruiseej]

@tv24 Flight schedules are so different than they used to be. You can't get a nonstop flight to Miami?

[Hlitner]

4 hours ago, Borna said:

Agree, little choice flying between usa and barbados.  I wonder why seabourn chose barbados. Besides American flying between miami and bridgetown, barbados (bgi), jet blue flies ftom jfk or ewr to bgi, but there is no mint class to or from jfk.  We opted for the ewr to bgi flight because it has mint class, but it doesn’t operate daily. We were able to find bus class on American leaving barbados, but until the day after the cruise. 

We originally had booked AA from BWI through MIA to Barbados.  At the time, AA had 2 daily flights to Barbados from MIA and we were on the earlier flight.  But a couple of weeks ago AA cancelled the earlier of their two flights (from MIA to Barbados) through Oct 6 (the last day they were altering their schedule) and also canceled our early morning flight from BWI to MIA.  Since we were flying on Oct 6, AA simply cancelled our flight since we would not have made the MIA connection.  When I asked AA if they were going to eventually cancel one of the two daily flights after Oct 6 the AA rep said that was a strong possibility although AA had yet to adjust the schedules past Oct 6.  At that point we simply took our full refund offered by AA and booked the Jet Blue flight out of JFK.   We had lost all confidence on AA''s schedule which seems to be more "advisory" rather than a real schedule.  We have a lot of previous experience with AA and can never recall AA keeping a schedule booked more then a few months in advance.  While normally we can work with their sched changes the situation with so few flights to Barbados caused us a lot of concern.  AA has received a lot of publicity in the last two weeks because they have canceled hundreds of flights for lack of crews and aircraft.  How long they continue with this canceling game is anyone's guess.

 

Hank

[jenidallas]

AA’s flux with the flight schedules is just another deterrent to us actually cruising in December.  The list keeps growing and I spent an hour booking award flights the other night that I was not thrilled with.  Luckily I can redeposit with no penalty so the speculation is okay at this point!
 

While we are holding a booking, we are starting to think seriously about whether we are ready yet for both travel convenience and personal reasons. 

[tv24]

18 hours ago, cruiseej said:

@tv24 Flight schedules are so different than they used to be. You can't get a nonstop flight to Miami?

Well yes we can fly San Francisco to MIA direct, but in order to meet up with the American flight to Barbados, we have to leave SFO very early in the morning, then there is a lay over in Miami, and one arrives a bit late in Barbados.  A long day of flying, not much fun.  Doable, but not preferable, especially for folks like us who like to take transoceanic cruises to avoid lots of flying.

[saminina]

In July, partnership between JetBlue and AA will mean collecting miles back and forth.  Not sure what else is in the program.