SS Air Bombshell--Absolute Must Read

[canderson]

5 hours ago, Critically Cruising said:

Flying is the worst part of cruising.....if you accept cruiseline-provided air.

Unless it isn't.  Our last cruise was from Denver - Lisbon, and SS routed us in Polaris class DEN to LHR, and business class LHR to LIS, one stop with an appropriate layover in LHR.  And you couldn't ask for nicer seats than Polaris on a 787 for a U.S. based airline.

 

Last year was DEN-FRA-BCN (again, major oversea leg DEN-FRA was on a 787 in Polaris) using X's air and my own upgrades stacked on top.

 

It can be a crap shoot, but we've been pretty lucky in recent years.

 

[Host Jazzbeau]

22 minutes ago, canderson said:

Unless it isn't.  Our last cruise was from Denver - Lisbon, and SS routed us in Polaris class DEN to LHR, and business class LHR to LIS, one stop with an appropriate layover in LHR.  And you couldn't ask for nicer seats than Polaris on a 787 for a U.S. based airline.

 

Last year was DEN-FRA-BCN (again, major oversea leg DEN-FRA was on a 787 in Polaris) using X's air and my own upgrades stacked on top.

 

It can be a crap shoot, but we've been pretty lucky in recent years.

 

Agree.  And the price difference between D2D with Business Air and P2P saves you enough to purchase Business flights on your preferred airline and route.  We did Qantas nonstop JFK-AKL, which I'm sure that neither Silversea nor any cruise line flight program would have done.  Their 787 is even nicer than Polaris. 

[canderson]

1 hour ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Agree.  And the price difference between D2D with Business Air and P2P saves you enough to purchase Business flights on your preferred airline and route. 

When we booked D2D this last time with SS, it was a year and change ahead of sailing, and same class + same route broke even when we added in the price of our usual car service, so we went with SS since we didn't have to make final payment on D2D until 120 days out.  SS was evidently getting a decent deal on the flights and not marking up much.  Their D2D package was about $100 more per person than the price I'd have had to pay for the same flights.  One way trans-oceanic, in particular, can get expensive.  Seems the good old days of easy to find 1 way international consolidator fares are gone forever.

 

[spinnaker2]

Just to clarify, we have had Silversky or whatever their moniker is at the moment, book flights for us that were fine. The most recent two cruises have been more of a challenge apparently and they weren’t able to offer us air reservations.  Not the case for this cruise, but then look what they booked for us.  Maybe it’s just time to avoid them altogether!

[Dolcevita Diva]

On 1/24/2024 at 9:13 AM, spinnaker2 said:

ACE system, bulltwistle.

 

Just got my flights for a cruise from Iceland to Lisbon.

Silversea has us flying from Miami to Seattle, a four hour layover and then Seattle to Iceland. 

How can this be an ACE?  ABSURD

 

 

 

Perhaps they thought that you were interested in doing a "mileage run" to earn additional flight credits or airline miles? 😉😂

[gnome12]

Not associated with a cruise, but many years ago I was in Cedar Rapids Iowa for a conference. I was supposed to fly back to Toronto through Chicago, but no flights were going to Chicago. I needed to be back the next morning, so I ended up flying Cedar Rapids to Denver to Las Vegas to Toronto. In Denver we were very late departing, and I asked whether I should bother flying to Vegas. I was told yes. Ultimately, I don’t think I was on the ground in Vegas for 10 minutes; landed, got off the plane, ran to the next gate, they closed the door behind me and we took off. I actually made it home, but what a routing. (But I did get FF miles for all that travel, and one leg was even in business class.)

[bobolz]

I’m sorry to hear about that crazy routing Spins. I agree that would be a no go. I hope you are able to have them changed.
 

We received a not so great routing on our upcoming cruise and asked if they could change the days and our SS agent  got back to us with the flights we wanted(both non stop and open jaw from PHL to/from Europe) , but with a reasonable deviation fee. Even with deviation fee,  there was no way I was getting that BC flight on my own for even close to what SS charged us.  So will wait and see if our  flights are ticketed as planned and if so, this will be the 4th time SS got us a better BC deal and non stop flights .good luck and hope all gets corrected.

[spinnaker2]

On 1/25/2024 at 7:35 PM, bobolz said:

I’m sorry to hear about that crazy routing Spins. I agree that would be a no go. I hope you are able to have them changed.
 

We received a not so great routing on our upcoming cruise and asked if they could change the days and our SS agent  got back to us with the flights we wanted(both non stop and open jaw from PHL to/from Europe) , but with a reasonable deviation fee. Even with deviation fee,  there was no way I was getting that BC flight on my own for even close to what SS charged us.  So will wait and see if our  flights are ticketed as planned and if so, this will be the 4th time SS got us a better BC deal and non stop flights .good luck and hope all gets corrected.

No word as of yet. 

This will be a deal breaker for us. 

[spinnaker2]

Just checked my Silversea and the newest reservations have us flying from MIA to Germany and then to Iceland. Why???

[gnome12]

10 minutes ago, spinnaker2 said:

Just checked my Silversea and the newest reservations have us flying from MIA to Germany and then to Iceland. Why???

Because they don’t have contracts with the airlines that fly from the US to Iceland? Sounds a bit crazy. 

[spinnaker2]

5 hours ago, gnome12 said:

Because they don’t have contracts with the airlines that fly from the US to Iceland? Sounds a bit crazy. 

No clue but it's still not acceptable when one can fly to JFK and then on to Iceland.

[turtlemichael]

22 minutes ago, spinnaker2 said:

No clue but it's still not acceptable when one can fly to JFK and then on to Iceland.

As they offered you flights via Seattle, I guess it is Icelandair ? Given the number of more convenient, for you, locations in the US that they fly to it is likely Silversea does not have contracts for those destinations. It's a bit hard to fathom that they would not have a NYC-KEF contract. Keep fighting!

Edited January 28 by turtlemichael

[Critically Cruising]

4 hours ago, spinnaker2 said:

No clue but it's still not acceptable when one can fly to JFK and then on to Iceland.

 

4 hours ago, turtlemichael said:

As they offered you flights via Seattle, I guess it is Icelandair ? Given the number of more convenient, for you, locations in the US that they fly to it is likely Silversea does not have contracts for those destinations. It's a bit hard to fathom that they would not have a NYC-KEF contract. Keep fighting!

 

Just because there are flights from JFK to KEF, and just because there may be a contract with Icelandair, does NOT mean that there are any available contract seats between JFK and KEF.  Because it's not about the seats available on the open market, it's about the seats that SS (or any cruiseline) has available.

 

"Fighting" won't make seats appear out of thin air.

 

 

[turtlemichael]

2 hours ago, Critically Cruising said:

 

 

Just because there are flights from JFK to KEF, and just because there may be a contract with Icelandair, does NOT mean that there are any available contract seats between JFK and KEF.  Because it's not about the seats available on the open market, it's about the seats that SS (or any cruiseline) has available.

 

"Fighting" won't make seats appear out of thin air.

 

 

You appear to be disagreeing with something I did not say. I know it depends on the terms of the contract and I do not know those terms. You probably don't either. Silversea have already changed spinnaker2's flights so they have more than one option. Spinnaker2 will never get a satisfactory resolution unless they challenge unsatisfactory arrangements. They may still not get a good outcome but they certainly won't unless they try.

[spinnaker2]

Thanks turtle. I will keep trying to get a more reasonable itinerary. If not, we will cancel the cruise or we will try and get flights on our own.  

 

[les37b]

10 hours ago, Critically Cruising said:

 

 

Just because there are flights from JFK to KEF, and just because there may be a contract with Icelandair, does NOT mean that there are any available contract seats between JFK and KEF.  Because it's not about the seats available on the open market, it's about the seats that SS (or any cruiseline) has available.

 

"Fighting" won't make seats appear out of thin air.

 

 

 

So Spins should just accept whatever toot she is offered?

 

On my Japan cruise last year, SS insisted they were unable to offer a flight from Anchorage / Seattle / LHR with Virgin / Delta  and suggested they didn't have any contract for this "Canadian route" (their words not mine.) . I provided evidence they did as a fellow guest was on the flight. They then claimed this guest booked their own flights (which they didn't and I was able to provide them with the other guests details.) They then said yes and agreed to book us on this flight. Victory was short lived as about a month later the flights were cancelled. We had a similar scenario with the outbound flights to Osaka and found the whole experience unpleasant. 

 

Whilst there were no direct flights for that cruise, I'm now of the opinion in the future, that anything we book needs to have direct flights unless its something exceptional. Our next cruise coming up is Bali to Bangkok and we were unable to get direct flights for this - but have been given Emirates on the way out and chose to give Qatar a go on the way back which we are fine with. It's now going to be a big consideration going forward, which I'd probably either cancel the cruise rather than accept an awful option like Spins has been given.

[MuseCruiser]

30 minutes ago, les37b said:

 

So Spins should just accept whatever toot she is offered?

 

On my Japan cruise last year, SS insisted they were unable to offer a flight from Anchorage / Seattle / LHR with Virgin / Delta  and suggested they didn't have any contract for this "Canadian route" (their words not mine.) . I provided evidence they did as a fellow guest was on the flight. They then claimed this guest booked their own flights (which they didn't and I was able to provide them with the other guests details.) They then said yes and agreed to book us on this flight. Victory was short lived as about a month later the flights were cancelled. We had a similar scenario with the outbound flights to Osaka and found the whole experience unpleasant. 

 

Whilst there were no direct flights for that cruise, I'm now of the opinion in the future, that anything we book needs to have direct flights unless its something exceptional. Our next cruise coming up is Bali to Bangkok and we were unable to get direct flights for this - but have been given Emirates on the way out and chose to give Qatar a go on the way back which we are fine with. It's now going to be a big consideration going forward, which I'd probably either cancel the cruise rather than accept an awful option like Spins has been given.

Can you clarify? Flights canceled by whom? The airline? If so did the airline rebook you and how did that work out?

[spinnaker2]

Thanks Les.

 

 

[Critically Cruising]

2 hours ago, les37b said:

Whilst there were no direct flights for that cruise, I'm now of the opinion in the future, that anything we book needs to have direct flights unless its something exceptional. Our next cruise coming up is Bali to Bangkok and we were unable to get direct flights for this - but have been given Emirates on the way out and chose to give Qatar a go on the way back which we are fine with.

 

I assume you mean "non-stop" which is not the same thing as "direct".  They are not synonyms.

 

You would never get a "direct" or "non-stop" from the UK to/from Bali.  Because none exists.

 

 

 

 

 

[les37b]

 

19 hours ago, MuseCruiser said:

Can you clarify? Flights canceled by whom? The airline? If so did the airline rebook you and how did that work out?

 

The flights were cancelled by the airline well in advance of the departure date, though one we spotted that the Dutch government were making KLM remove about a dozen long haul destinations out of Amsterdam and mine to Osaka was one on the list to be axed. We proactively got SS to change this, which proved to be a good thing as the airline did indeed axe the route. We flew BA to Tokyo and JAL to Osaka in the end

 

 

Edited January 29 by les37b