Upgrade air with your own miles

[seaver]

Can you upgrade your Silversea air with your own miles after you are ticketed?

Thanks

[jjs217]

It depends upon the airline and your frequent miler status.  If they are willing to put you on an upgrade list, you will be low priority as the cruise lines have a "cheaper" contract price with the airlines than those who pay a regular price.

[seaver]

Thanks for the reply. We are going to request Delta, anyone have luck dealing with Delta?

[commodoredave]

Just wondering why you wouldn't take the air fare credit from SS, book your own economy ticket directly with Delta and then use your points to upgrade? Might be easier to upgrade your own ticket than a bulk ticket provided by the cruise line, plus you would know the details of your flights sooner.

 

[seaver]

37 minutes ago, commodoredave said:

Just wondering why you wouldn't take the air fare credit from SS, book your own economy ticket directly with Delta and then use your points to upgrade? Might be easier to upgrade your own ticket than a bulk ticket provided by the cruise line, plus you would know the details of your flights sooner.

 

If I did that wouldn't I lose transfers and hotel?

[canderson]

14 minutes ago, seaver said:

If I did that wouldn't I lose transfers and hotel?

Is there a "door-to-door without air" option available for your sailing?

[seaver]

2 minutes ago, canderson said:

Is there a "door-to-door without air" option available for your sailing?

I don't think so.

[labrasett]

17 minutes ago, seaver said:

I don't think so.

I think you can always opt out of the air segment for the price shown on the website.  Speak to your rep.

 

[seaver]

20 minutes ago, labrasett said:

I think you can always opt out of the air segment for the price shown on the website.  Speak to your rep.

 

It looks like I will lose everything else if I did that. Are you saying I can opt out of air but keep tranfers

and hotels?

[canderson]

52 minutes ago, seaver said:

I don't think so.

Go online and do a mock booking for your cruise and see what's actually offered.

[labrasett]

6 minutes ago, seaver said:

It looks like I will lose everything else if I did that. Are you saying I can opt out of air but keep tranfers

and hotels?

I dont know how it works in your country but usually on the Silversea booking site for a specific cruise  there is a page with headings including "Fares and offers", if you open that up there is usually a figure quoted for non use air credit which leaves all the other elements of door to door in place possibly excluding tranfer from airport to port.   I tend to book D2D then take the non use credits for air and Black lane transfer which gives me the freedom to choose and book my own flights but retain the better cancellation rights attached to D2D over P2P.

[commodoredave]

On my last SS cruise in March it was door to door with air and transfers but without hotels. I opted out of the air and maintained the transfers (Blacklane). So hotels may not be included in all door to door cruises. 

[seaver]

9 minutes ago, canderson said:

Go online and do a mock booking for your cruise and see what's actually offered.

I did that and it's all or nothing. thanks for the suggestion.

 

[drron29]

From Delta's website-

"For all markets, with the exception of Delta-operated flights in North America and South America, Mileage Upgrade Awards on Delta-marketed and operated flights may be used to upgrade on the following paid fare classes: Y, B, M, H, Q, or K."

Those are basically full fare economy classes.

And this site shows you what classes of fare are upgradeable. this is the page for Delta.

https://cwsi.net/m/delta.htm

 

There are 11 fare classes in economy which are not upgradeable. pounds to peanuts the fare class cruise lines get will be one of those 11.

The other thing to be aware of an airline won't be able to upgrade you until your booking has been ticketed and Silversea tickets your airfare 55-60 days before sailing. Quite possible a lot of the upgrade seats have gone by that time. Sometimes however you can be lucky.

 

There was a previous thread on this with lots of advice from @UKCruiseJeff

 

 

[FlyerTalker]

Note that the last update to the cwsi.net fare chart was in September of 2020. 

 

That does NOT take away from the basic fact that ANY issue of upgrades is completely dependent upon the fare rules of the specific ticket.  And that even within fare buckets, fare rules can be, and are, different.

 

Unless you know the specific fare code of your ticket (and that goes beyond just the "first letter" bucket designation), and know the specific fare rules of that fare code -- any statement about upgradeability is at best an informed guess.

 

 

[nolatravelgirl]

On 6/18/2023 at 12:42 PM, seaver said:

I did that and it's all or nothing. thanks for the suggestion.

 

Can you share which sailing you are on? I am going to assume that you are in the US? 

[seaver]

13 minutes ago, nolatravelgirl said:

Can you share which sailing you are on? I am going to assume that you are in the US? 

Feb.5 South America on Silver Nova. Yes the US outside of Charlotte NC

[nolatravelgirl]

I don't think you are missing out on much by not just booking port-to-port. It looks like you would probably be better off just booking your own flights and car service. I would confirm that your fare actually includes hotels pre/post cruise. The difference is $4,100 dollars. You can book Delta today for about $1300pp, so $2600 which leaves you with $1,500. With the remaining $1500 you could book some fairly nice hotels and get an Uber Black to/from the airport. The other bonus would be you would know exactly what flights you are on today and could research which fare are upgradeable. 

[seaver]

On 6/20/2023 at 10:53 AM, nolatravelgirl said:

I don't think you are missing out on much by not just booking port-to-port. It looks like you would probably be better off just booking your own flights and car service. I would confirm that your fare actually includes hotels pre/post cruise. The difference is $4,100 dollars. You can book Delta today for about $1300pp, so $2600 which leaves you with $1,500. With the remaining $1500 you could book some fairly nice hotels and get an Uber Black to/from the airport. The other bonus would be you would know exactly what flights you are on today and could research which fare are upgradeable. 

Just talked to my TA, at this point SS will only take off $1500.00 for flight credit. The only way they let us go from door to door to port to port is with a 15% penalty. We will take the $1500 and use miles and still get transfers and hotel from SS.

[commodoredave]

On 6/27/2023 at 2:24 PM, seaver said:

Just talked to my TA, at this point SS will only take off $1500.00 for flight credit. The only way they let us go from door to door to port to port is with a 15% penalty. We will take the $1500 and use miles and still get transfers and hotel from SS.

That's exactly what we did on our March trans-Atlantic, and what we are doing on our Japan cruise next April. It would have cost us CDN$10,000 each for business class tickets on a door to door to Tokyo, so we took the $2,000 each air credit and used airmiles for biz class to Tokyo on JAL. Huge savings!!!

[taxatty]

We did the same--took $1500 PP air credit, used 90K PP AA miles to fly AA First to Australia for our Darwin SS Kimberley cruise.