anyone else had problems with Princess air?

[debintexas]

I've had problems with them on 2 other cruises and on the British Isles cruise 8-24 they've made 2 changes since it was booked. The latest leaves us leaving London earlier and sitting in the Atlanta airport for 4 hours and to Dallas at 11:00 p.m. (the earlier flight was through Minneapolis but at least the wait time was better and it wasn't Atlanta).

Of course, this latest change cannot be changed without significant charges as they finally "booked" the ticket (makes you wonder what they were doing before). And it's on Delta so worrying they'll go completely out of business any day (they've cancelled the other 2 flights because no one is booking on them).

 

My TA, as usual, can't do anything although they push Princess almost exclusively, claim to have contacts throughout the company, etc. Has anyone had any luck getting a bad flight changed without steep payment? Thanks.

[KKMKEM]

That is why I pay the $50 to $75 extra to get the direct flights.

[jhenry1]

Let us know how this works out as we have never booked air through Princess but through Carnival and in August we are using the Regent air because it was included on the Alaska cruise.

 

We are thinking of booking a Princess for next year to the Med. and maybe use their air and pre and post cruise packages just for the convience but we live in Austin Texas and no good flights to the med. Could have a lot of stops and long layovers.

 

Kandy from Texas

[Toto2Kansas]

Even though you purchased Princess air, Princess has no control over changes made in the flight times. They are just selling you the flight.

 

I do agree though, paying the deviation fee is a better way when booking through Princess, but even then, flight times and layovers can change and you have absolutely no control over them.

 

Just an FYI-We didn't book Princess air for our British Isles cruise but used FF miles a couple of years ago. By the time we were to leave for the cruise, I had a huge folder which contained all of the flight changes, from the type of plane to the flight numbers to the flight times (over a dozen changes in 4 months). Many flight times change several times after booking now, and you have to really keep your eye on them. Even this close, you could have another change before it's time to leave.

 

I will never forget the last time we flew a TransPacific flight without paying the deviation fee on Princess. Princess made all the arrangements and we had a 7 hour layover in San Francisco after arriving from Sydney. That was terrible. Good Luck!

[Embracedbylife]

That is why I pay the $50 to $75 extra to get the direct flights.

 

You can pay extra through pricess to get a direct flight? This is good to know if that's the case! I've always purchased my own air. Do you get a better deal through princess then on your own?

[Toto2Kansas]

You can pay extra through pricess to get a direct flight? This is good to know if that's the case! I've always purchased my own air. Do you get a better deal through princess then on your own?

 

 

It all depends. If the direct flight is not within the dollar amount of the flight Princess would have chosen for you, you are responsible to pay the difference. So, always check if there will be an extra charge when checking flights with the devaition fee. And another couple of things, the devation fee is non refundable, and Princess airfare prices are not locked in until you make final payment, unlike booking your own flights.

[cruiserus]

You can pay extra through pricess to get a direct flight? This is good to know if that's the case! I've always purchased my own air. Do you get a better deal through princess then on your own?

 

When we use Princess Air, we check before final payment is due and see if they can tell us possible routing, price, airline, etc. If we don't like it, we pay the deviation and request certain airline, flight, etc. We also check before we call to see what price we can get airfare for independently. Sometimes, especially on one-way flights, Princess can get it cheaper. Other times, we can get it cheaper on our own. It just pays to shop around.

[Toto2Kansas]

When we use Princess Air, we check before final payment is due and see if they can tell us possible routing, price, airline, etc. If we don't like it, we pay the deviation and request certain airline, flight, etc. We also check before we call to see what price we can get airfare for independently. Sometimes, especially on one-way flights, Princess can get it cheaper. Other times, we can get it cheaper on our own. It just pays to shop around.

 

I need to ask, how in the world you find out your air info before final payment when you haven't paid the deviation fee? I have never been able to get that information on Princess but would love to know your secret. ;)

[Coral]

I've had problems with them on 2 other cruises and on the British Isles cruise 8-24 they've made 2 changes since it was booked. The latest leaves us leaving London earlier and sitting in the Atlanta airport for 4 hours and to Dallas at 11:00 p.m. (the earlier flight was through Minneapolis but at least the wait time was better and it wasn't Atlanta).

 

These seem typical to me. Maybe I am just used to bad flights because of where I live.

 

On my last domestic flight that I booked, I had a 3.5 hour layover in Denver and got into Lincoln (my home) at 11:45 pm and to my house at 12:45 pm. Pretty typical for my flights.

 

Sometimes with all the chaos with the airlines, having a 4 hour layover is better then an hour. You may miss your flight with the 1 hour and end up spending the night at the airport!

 

As far as changes, the airlines change their flights a million times. It wouldn't surprise me if the cruise lines stopped offering air because they look bad when it really is the airlines that are not the best when it comes to switching flights around.

[Coral]

I need to ask, how in the world you find out your air info before final payment when you haven't paid the deviation fee? I have never been able to get that information on Princess but would love to know your secret. ;)

 

I think Princess changed this a few years ago. Though, since we never use Princess air...

 

Edited to say they changed it to 75 days out: http://www.princess.com/news/article.jsp?newsArticleId=na829

[Toto2Kansas]

I think Princess changed this a few years ago. Though, since we never use Princess air...

 

Edited to say they changed it to 75 days out: http://www.princess.com/news/article.jsp?newsArticleId=na829

 

Coral, Yes, I knew it was 75 days out, but that is final payment date. :confused: I was just wondering how they check before final payment for routing, airline, etc. We could get no information about our upcoming flights before the 75 day mark (this time it didn't matter as I booked comfortable flights in the night before, so it was neither here nor there. But it would have been nice to find out beforehand to adjust flights if need be without paying the deviation fee).

[Stevesan]

It all depends. If the direct flight is not within the dollar amount of the flight Princess would have chosen for you, you are responsible to pay the difference. So, always check if there will be an extra charge when checking flights with the devaition fee. And another couple of things, the devation fee is non refundable, and Princess airfare prices are not locked in until you make final payment, unlike booking your own flights.

 

All correct.

Add also that Princess must have a relationship with the specific airline, so confirm that up front.

I considered booking Princess air (silly idea).

I requested an air deviation, but the Princess air desk rejected the airline (Continental).

Of course, I booked directly. Better pricing and routing.

 

Princess wanted to book me on The Grace L Ferguson Airline And Storm Door Company !

I double checked because I thought it went out of business in the late fifties.

Sure as heck, it's still active. You have to report to Grace's house, then schlep your luggage upstairs to weigh on the bathroom scales. :mad:

However, Grace kept the Volkswagon to take you to the airport. :p

[Toto2Kansas]

Stevesan, That is strange about the Continental flights. I wonder if Princess has recently changed and included Continental? Reason being is that we booked Princess air (first time in a very long time for us) for our open jaw flights this fall. LAX to Honolulu and then Papeete to LAX (we booked ourselves to LAX as that was much more cost effective) for our B2B cruise. We could not come close to the Princess pricing on this one and have checked for almost a year.

 

BUT the kicker on this one is that we were assigned our flights to Honolulu just over a week ago and Princess assigned us a Continental flight from LAX to Honolulu. The best part is that of all the flights out there, this one would have been the one we would have booked if the price would have been within range. And we did not pay the deviation fee on this one either. Mainly as we knew there were only two flights on ATN back to LAX from Tahiti (and we didn't care which one we were assigned). And arranged to arrive at LAX the night before our Hawaii flight, so that made no difference to us either.

 

I do have to admit though, I was pleased at what Princess assigned us when it comes to flights, for the first time in all these years. ;)

[flamomo]

My only experience using Princess Air was a very good one. We chose pay the extra $50 each to have more control over our flights. Our flights involved flying into LAX from 2 different states, and flying from LAX to Papeete, Tahiti together.

We chose Princess Air at the time we booked the cruise, and the people in Flight Choice were very good. Anytime we had a question or concern, they were very helpful and pleasant. They provided us with flight schedule information at least 3 months before the cruise. When it was necessary to make a change due to a change in Air Tahiti Nui's schedule for the outbound flight, Flight Choice improved over the original flight by getting us on a 1 PM flight, instead of the late afternoon one, thereby giving us several more hours in Papeete before the cruise.

Ordinarily, we would have booked our own air arrangements, had we been doing a cruise from a port in the continental US, but considering where we were going and the cost of the r/t fare, Princess Air was the right choice for us at that time. They did it for less money and got us a decent flight schedule.

[franklin1]

We used Princess Air for our Baltic cruise this year and after seeing where they were sending us, I called and changed our flights - cost $50. Go for it - it was easy.

[cdngrl]

never mind, i just saw the answer to the question i was going to ask! (whether you could get a flight deviation after final payment).

[caribill]

We used Princess Air for our Baltic cruise this year and after seeing where they were sending us, I called and changed our flights - cost $50. Go for it - it was easy.

 

 

I thought the charge was $50/person for domestic USA flights and $75/person for overseas destinations.

[Toto2Kansas]

I thought the charge was $50/person for domestic USA flights and $75/person for overseas destinations.

 

It always has been the times we used it. :confused:

[grandmato4]

As others have said, Princess has no control over the airline flight changes. They happen to all of us that book flights directly with the airlines ALL the time. Since you sounded ok with your first flight plans I'm really not sure if you had originally book paying the divation fee if they would be more inclined to check with the airline and attempt to change your flights or not.

 

Booking directly with the airlines when we see that there are changes made that we are not happy with we call the airline directly after checking for other flights so we know which flight we would like and ask nicely if there is space to be changed to one of those flights. So far we've always had success.

[jorgy]

When booking a Panama Cruise out of Fort Lauderdale in Feb/10 Princess quoted $1,008.00 Canadian per person for air, return of course. I booked the flights on line for $243.00 U.S. each. The other advantage of doing the booking myself is that I know what flights we will be on, the scheduled stop, the waiting time, etc. whereas with Princess you really never know what you end up with until they make the decision. We arrive the day before to make sure we don't miss the ship so I guess we need to add in the cost of the hotel, but it is still much better and you know what you are in store for.

Jorgy

[captainron]

For our Princess Air bookings on our Coral repo cruise FLL/SFO/YVR in May 06, we were booked the following legs:

 

YVR/IAH connecting 45 minutes later IAH/FLL all on newer B737 aircraft.

 

Ciao for now!!!

[Shoalwater]

I've had problems with them on 2 other cruises and on the British Isles cruise 8-24 they've made 2 changes since it was booked. The latest leaves us leaving London earlier and sitting in the Atlanta airport for 4 hours and to Dallas at 11:00 p.m. (the earlier flight was through Minneapolis but at least the wait time was better and it wasn't Atlanta).

Of course, this latest change cannot be changed without significant charges as they finally "booked" the ticket (makes you wonder what they were doing before). And it's on Delta so worrying they'll go completely out of business any day (they've cancelled the other 2 flights because no one is booking on them).

 

My TA, as usual, can't do anything although they push Princess almost exclusively, claim to have contacts throughout the company, etc. Has anyone had any luck getting a bad flight changed without steep payment? Thanks.

 

This could be brought about by scheduling changes as Delta gobbles up Northwest Airlines. go to the NW site ad see if you can see the original flights and cxns. Chances are you can't. that having been said, it sounds like you pay in many ways for the convenience f letting Princess choose your air arrangements. Of course, I fly about 75,000 miles a year and always make my own selections on business, so would never dream of passing it over to Princess for vacation.

[iancal]

My understanding is that cruise line air tickets are essentially consolidator tickets, ie you go when they want you to go with as many stopovers and long times inbetween as they want. They are essentially routings or times that they airlines have problems filling- bottom of the barrel fare code. THis may be slightly different on transatlantic. So, the cruiselines essentially sell you a bargain basement ticket at what is often a higher fare than you would pay if you arranged/selected your own flights in the full knowledge that you will pay even more money to have these tickets upgraded to the airline/routing of you choice. That is how it seems to me on North American routings. We do our own air.

[Stevesan]

Stevesan, That is strange about the Continental flights. I wonder if Princess has recently changed and included Continental? Reason being is that we booked Princess air (first time in a very long time for us) for our open jaw flights this fall. LAX to Honolulu and then Papeete to LAX (we booked ourselves to LAX as that was much more cost effective) for our B2B cruise. We could not come close to the Princess pricing on this one and have checked for almost a year.

 

BUT the kicker on this one is that we were assigned our flights to Honolulu just over a week ago and Princess assigned us a Continental flight from LAX to Honolulu. The best part is that of all the flights out there, this one would have been the one we would have booked if the price would have been within range. And we did not pay the deviation fee on this one either. Mainly as we knew there were only two flights on ATN back to LAX from Tahiti (and we didn't care which one we were assigned). And arranged to arrive at LAX the night before our Hawaii flight, so that made no difference to us either.

 

I do have to admit though, I was pleased at what Princess assigned us when it comes to flights, for the first time in all these years. ;)

 

Nothing is "strange" when dealing with cruise line reps! :p

 

It was last September when I was seeking air for a R/T Houston-Quebec. The air desk at Princess said air deviation wasn't available thru Continental.

I didn't pursue it any further, but maybe it was because of the Canada connection, or some other more esoteric reason.

 

My primary message is that the air deviation option is not always available.

 

I have twice booked air thru the cruise line for open jaw Europe cruises. The routing was exactly as I would have selected, and with better pricing.

At that time, land transfers were included w/cruise air. I believe that goody has been discontinued.

 

I've frequently seen reports of good experiences with open jaw trips.

[debintexas]

Thanks to all who replied. I didn't get it changed but sure know more for the next trip--CC is great!!