Viking Cruises - Recent Air Arrangements Experiences

[Abe]

I would like to know if anyone has had any recent positive or negative experiences with Viking's air arrangements - especially regarding connections, connection times and seat assignments.

 

I've booked a cruise to China with air through Viking and now I have nightmares that my wife and I will be separated and in middle seats for 12 hour flights.

 

All of the Viking reviews that I've read made very little mention about air accommodations so I'm hoping that is good news.

 

Thanks

[Grumpy7]

I would like to know if anyone has had any recent positive or negative experiences with Viking's air arrangements - especially regarding connections, connection times and seat assignments.

 

I've booked a cruise to China with air through Viking and now I have nightmares that my wife and I will be separated and in middle seats for 12 hour flights.

 

All of the Viking reviews that I've read made very little mention about air accommodations so I'm hoping that is good news.

 

Thanks

 

There is another thread suggesting that you pay $75 each and you can get air and seats now.

We did that last month for a Viking trip next July to Hong Kong and China and chose good flights and seats. Please call your travel agent and this will take away some angst.

In the thread, it also mentioned being able to speaking directly to the manager at Viking. Our travel agent spoke to them and we got what we think are very good arrangements.

You just don't want connections that make you feel like(pardon the expression) OJ Simpson in an old Hertz commercial running thru a terminal.

[micked10@earthlink.net]

I would take the previous posters advice and secure your own seats. We did Viking air to Amsterdam 2 years ago and I requested aisle seats next to each other or preferably 2 seats together but NO MIDDLE seats. The agent told me that they " usually honor your requests". I called back about 3 months prior to the trip and tomake a long story short we had middle seats for both flights!. Now, I either pay the extra or book my own flights even though it is a little more expensive.

Good Luck

micked10

[webfoot]

We took a land-only trip and with all of the airfare that we bought through the tour company, we didn't know until the last minute where our seats were ... a real bummer ... so, now with booking this cruise, we did our own airfare (using miles) and know where we are going to be seated already ... (and we also know that we won't be going into one London airport and out of the other on one leg of the trip). I don't think we will ever use the airfare provided by the tour company again.

[Abe]

Thank you all for your replies. I will definitely look into the $75.00 custom air option.

[lobsterlover]

You all are probably familiar with the web site.....http://www.seatguru.com, but I just learned about it this year. Once you know what type aircraft you will be on you can pull up the diagram with all the info about the seats. They will tell if the seats are good or poor (no air circulation, or too close to restrooms, etc.). Then when you know your seat assignment (which I learned months before we left) you can check to see if you want to request a change. (14 hours next to the serving station is not a good location either...smells can become overpowering from the warm ups.) We did China this year and loved it.....we were with GCT. They were able to get us both aisle seats on all flights. Enjoy your trip.

 

L. L.

[VictoriaH]

All good ideas! However, we have done it both ways. The problem is that often the air lines make changes in their equipment and that throws off the entire seating arrangement.

For our recent trip to Europe we did pay the cruise line extra for "air deviation" which allowed us to choose the seats we wanted, we did this about 6 months in advance when we purchased the cruise. Before our departure the air line changed to another plane with a different seat

configuration. In doing so that threw out our seats completely. My travel agent caught this and was able to get us seats reassigned but by that time the seats by the window were all taken.

On another recent flight we were flying with an airline that would not let us choose our seat until 90 days before our flight. I requested window and adjacent seats and when I checked on the 90th day they had assigned seats, not together and they were in the middle. The flight was full so no changes could be made.

So you cannot win as the airlines do not seem to care.

Good luck.

[couchking]

We went to China with Viking in October. The problem with booking the air on your own was that Viking offered such a tremendous deal that you couldn't turn it down.

It depends where you live as to what kind of arrangements you get. We were leaving from Newark, and was booked on Air Canada. The arrangements seemed great since we were flying from Newark to Toronto and then Toronto direct. The problem was that one week before we left, Air Canada cancelled their Toronto-Shanghai flight on the date we were flying so we had to go Toronto -Vancouver/Vancouver-Shanghai. It took a couple of more hours, but we were lucky on all of our flights, which went without a hitch. Another thing about Air Canada is that their planes to China are 2 4(or 5)2. We had the 2 seats on all flights and they were reserved for us through Viking.

Everything went pretty smoothly, so don't stress. We didn't talk to anyone on our trip that had flying nightmares,

Good luck

[WIT]

We used Viking's air arrangements for our Viking Cultural Delights cruise tour this last April. We knew the seat assignments well in advance (with United) and improved them by purchasing Mileage Plus (6 extra inches of leg room). All the intra-China flights had pre-assigned seating that was not announced until your tour guide (one for every 30) got the tickets. In each case we were assigned adjacent seats but it would have been easy to switch within the group. Relax and enjoy China.

WIT

[Abe]

Thank you for sharing your experiences using Viking's air arrangements. Viking's airfare offer was just too good to pass up.

 

I'm in the process of purchasing the custom air deviation through my TA so that I can select seats.

 

Again, my thanks for the information.

[shipgirl56]

We are using Viking Air for our trip to China next May. We paid the extra and then called them up to switch our airline and pick our seats. It was no problem and took only a few minutes. Our in-laws are coming from California and we are coming from Washington. They hooked us up in Vancouver, Canada to fly to Shanghai with seats behind each other. I checked the price and couldn't do much better than Vikings price.