Questions about Silversea Air ?

We have never used Silversea Air (we have used Regent air and always deviated so wondering if they work the same)?

We will be going on the Silver Explorer Arctic trip and need to get TO Oslo and home FROM Reykjavik. I'm struggling trying to find decent flights using f.f. miles so may want to use Silversea Air (can't book till 270 days prior).

What airlines have they used in the past? Do they work with Icelandic Air or Fin Air ?

I contacted Silversea customer service but they were no help since we're too far out to book air. Are their Business Class prices better or at least competitive?

How much do they charge to deviate and chose our own flights and dates? If we don't deviate, do they select decent flights and times (we want to fly Business Class).

If possible, We'd prefer to avoid BA as we don't like their jigsaw, forward, backward crammed in seating configuration.

Thanks for any help. :)

We've sometimes used SS air and sometimes not, mostly in business class. Our experience has been SS air is a better deal for open jaw and a worse deal for regular return flights. You have the peace of mind that the arrangements are "their problem", including transfers. If something goes wrong, you have somebody to call (in office hours). That helped us once.

We generally get SS to quote for air and then compare what we can get on the open market.

SS's deviation fee is published ($50pp?), but there may be a supplement for the difference in fare, especially if you change airlines.

Starting in Europe (and I realise you're not), SS currently seems to use BA and Emirates, depending on destination. Another consideration for you may be routing and the timing of layovers -- and even if you think you've got this well organised, airlines change schedules at the drop of a hat, so they may mess up your plans anyway.

Finally, recently some folks who were expecting to join or leave the ship in Istanbul and arranged their own flights are having to re-book (because SS has changed itineraries to avoid Turkey). If they had used SS air, that would have been SS's problem. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

We used Silversea Air once. As jgibbs said it works best for open jaw flights. We used the service to connect with our 2013 cruise that went from London to Reykjavik. I was talked into using SS air by the travel agent we used but once I started to price alternates on my own I realized it was the best way to go.

Deviation fees were $100 per person per deviation. It was still worthwhile to us. We wanted to spend a few days in London before boarding the ship and a few days in Reykjavik before heading home in Toronto.

As for airlines they flew us out on British Airways and home on Icelandair - both of which were non-stops for us.

Next month we are back on Silversea but made our own arrangements this time. So its all about shopping around.

We used SS Air to get to/from our Whisper Baltic cruise when SS was offering inexpensive upgrades to Business class air. Added 2 days in Stockholm at the beginning and 2 days in London at the end. Yes, paid deviation for those days.

Our travel agent called us with several schedule options and we ended up driving to Newark and getting non-stop both ways on United. Another option was to fly from Dulles and change in Frankfurt in the middle of the night/early morning. Or fly from Dulles to Newark on a prop and pray they get our luggage loaded on and transferred!

I think a personal travel agent may work a little harder than just calling SS to find flights that we like. This was our 3rd cruise booked with her and now we have a 4th in just a few weeks. Did our own air this time as we used miles to get the tickets.

Thank you. It's tough because we almost have to decide now if we're going to use f.f. miles (outbound flights opening any day now) because by the 270 days SS Air date, there likely won't be any f.f. options left...especially in Biz.

I'm leaning towards not even attempting to use f.f. miles (been playing with "fake" dates and nothing is working) and just bite the bullet and pay and deviate with SS's air and use f.f. miles another time. Cancelling and re-depositing f.f. miles is EXPENSIVE and not a good way to go.

Thanks all !!

One more question please....does SS Air do one way if we should use f.f. miles for one way ? Thanks!

Marcie, believe Tom and you have the AMX-Platinum card, if so, January 1st you could select your airline (e.g. AA, Delta, et. al) and then the airline redeposit fee would be

paid by the AMX-Platinum card airline fee benefit that (u can change every Jan 1st).

Marcie; We have used the cruise line air in the past with both Regent and Silversea going both ways and have always been satisfied. It's not necessarily the cheapest way to go, but it's always been reliable with no worries. However, we always pay the extra $100 to get the airline and routing that we want; ie, no JFK, no Chicago and no United Airlines. As you know, we have usually used B&K and they have always been able to get what we wanted. If you and Tom still use them I would ask them.