Custom air

[Roger2008]

I wish to share my experiences with all my cruise critic friends and see if anyone has any ideas to share.

I am entitled to custom air and decided to exercise my option this trip. I wanted to fly a day early and leave later in the day so as to experience my destination city somewhat before my departure.

I called and asked about custom air options. My only option outbound was to take the same flight a day earlier (630am). Nothing else. I had wanted to take an afternoon flight and arrive early evening. my only departure options was 1030am flight out (cutting it close wouldnt you say?).

My question is: what good is it if you do not have any options? Anyone else ever have similar problems? Any suggestions?

 

Thank you

 

:confused:

[cruisenfever]

I wish to share my experiences with all my cruise critic friends and see if anyone has any ideas to share.

I am entitled to custom air and decided to exercise my option this trip. I wanted to fly a day early and leave later in the day so as to experience my destination city somewhat before my departure.

I called and asked about custom air options. My only option outbound was to take the same flight a day earlier (630am). Nothing else. I had wanted to take an afternoon flight and arrive early evening. my only departure options was 1030am flight out (cutting it close wouldnt you say?).

My question is: what good is it if you do not have any options? Anyone else ever have similar problems? Any suggestions?

 

Thank you

 

:confused:

Sorry that you are having problems. What we do is we research flights (we use bookingbuddy.com) then we find something that is convenient to us (without a lot of connections), we give these flights to our TA who in turn contacts the Air/Sea Dept. Even though the air deviation fee is waived we may still have to pay an additional charge to get the flights that we want. To us it is well worth it.

 

It seems that those early morning flights are much cheaper for RCI to contract than the prime time ones, so to speak.:(

 

Did RCI want you to take a 10:30 flight home after your cruise? It all depends on the port...............some 10:30AM flights are doable.

 

If you know what your air allowance is..........you may want to research booking the flights on your own..................you may find fares cheaper than what your air allowance is.

[AF-1]

Have u booked your cruise thru RCI or thru a travel agent?

[negc]

Have u booked your cruise thru RCI or thru a travel agent?

We have always used a TA but it shouldn't matter. Our experience with custom air has always been a good one and on our transatlantic cruises the one-way cruiseline airfare was better than what we could book on our own and we were able to specify the flight we wanted and it was approved by RCI.:)

[Roger2008]

I was told to try try again as every day (as the customer service rep said) things change. I will try back in several weeks with hopefully new knowledge and techniques from my friends here:)

[Ohunion Cruzers]

If you booked air through RCI, CANCEL the air. Then, book your own air with the flights and times you want. You can always purchase the transfers only from RCI.

[JBert]

We did custom air for our upcoming cruise out of POM-

 

We ended up getting a flight out of Hartford the day before @ 630AM -nonstop flight- putting us in Miami around 11ish - nice full day in town.

 

However, going home is a pain - we have a 1pm flight of of MIA, fly to Detriot, then to Hartford getting home at 11:30PM - oh well