Cozzyleicester

I have my outbound flight shown in the My PO Cruises flights page as Virgin 663, LHR to BGI, departing 09:00 on 4th Feb 23.

However the inbound flight, departing ANU on 11th Feb 23 shows as "CARRIER TBA Flight 662" with the destination of just "LONDON (LON)"

OK so based upon the latest email I received from P&O inviting me to upgrade to Virgin Upper class (£995 pp each way 😲), I think it is a safe bet now on who they will be using to operate the Arvia Antigua flights.

Bottom of the email does say "flight details on their way..." so still no details yet on which London departure airport, how to book your seats, etc.

1 hour ago, davecttr said:

It could be that a single return leg from Antigua is the problem. For example TUI Dreamliner flights to the Caribbean are on the 9th and 12th. The airline would not want to fly an aircraft there empty.

 

Can you board the ship in Antigua?

Yes, you can, cruises are on sale starting and ending in Antigua on Arvia

I am one of many people that has booked on Arvia for the Caribbean season in winter 22/23 and waiting (still waiting) for details of flights to / from Antigua (in our case the return flight on 11th February, from K303B)

There are many posts on Fbook groups asking the same question so it doesn’t seem a case of it just not being my turn - instead there is just no information being provided to anyone by P&O

In case you’re not familiar with the situation:

For those flying out and back from Barbados for a “traditional” two-week cruise on Arvia, it seems the usual charter flights are all confirmed on TUI as per previous years and guests can book their seats, etc.

However, if like me, one or more legs of your journey to / from Arvia is from Antigua, NONE of your flights are confirmed. All I know is that I have flights booked from “London”, but don’t even know which airport (LHR or LGW) nor whether I might even have to fly out from one and back to the other

Does anyone on here have any intel, at least regarding WHEN the Antigua flights will be confirmed?

I found a press release from Antigua Cruise Port online stating an estimated 800 passengers will be handled during each homeport visit for Arvia. My hunch (and it is just that, I have no information to back this up) is P&O must therefore be negotiating with airline(s) to provide dedicated charter flights to mirror those already contracted with TUI out to Barbados

The rationale being that whilst there are 2 scheduled flights a day to ANU from the UK (Virgin from LHR and BA from LGW), between them they would only offer 350-odd Economy / PE seats in total and that’s assuming P&O were able to book the whole a/c, which is highly unlikely seeing it’s peak winter season. Also, flights from Manchester are being offered by P&O and there is no scheduled option there.

Will be interesting to see which airline P&O end up with since I’m not sure TUI have the additional 2 or 3 787s spare on a winter Saturday that would be needed (Premium seats are being sold by P&O so whichever carrier they use will need to be able to offer some kind of “premium” cabin). Flightmapper is usually a good source for info on any type of passenger flight (all this seasons’ P&O TUI charters are on there) but as of now nothing showing for Antigua apart from the above BA & Virgin

I suspect we were on the very same cruise the OP refers to, returning on Jan 26th. Like an earlier respondent  I was struggling somewhat to make sense of this post but whilst I would agree that the in house Pulse band were nothing like as good as on Britannia 2 years ago in the Caribbean,  I can’t disagree more with everything else the OP said.

If you ignore the whole ridiculous Butlins reference (if I had a £ for every time I see the old “P&O is becoming Butlins” chestnut I could have paid for my on board account), first thing I would say is if you’ve got a cruise coming up on Azura then don’t be put off, I saw no evidence of “it’s all going downhill”. We loved it from beginning to end and never spoke to anyone in the MDR that wasn’t enjoying it too.

I thought the entertainment hosts were great, I did several of the poolside quizzes and enjoyed them. And as for saying the Captain was “shocking”, well honestly I thought his announcements were just fine, and was my holiday spoiled because I didn’t see him to say hello?  No, of course it wasn’t. I went to the audience with the Captain and his team in the theatre and really enjoyed it, thought he carried himself pretty well in the face of some well, yes whinging by a couple of people which made me cringe; that’s despite the entertainment host saying at the outset, “please can we take individual concerns outside of this session”.

BTW we only ate a couple of times in the buffet when time was short and thought it was just fine, particularly the curries.

So overall, horses for courses but I thought it was worth bringing a bit of balance to this debate from someone on the same cruise, particularly for the benefit of those for whom these forums are their only source of info if new to cruising and might be worried when seeing posts like this (believe me I know what that’s like, reading all sorts of critical reviews of Britannia before our first cruise and thinking oh no - then you get on the ship and say to yourself “they must have been on a different ship!”)

I booked for January 2019 pretty much as soon as they became available, which was March this year. So if the same principle applies I'm guessing you would be able to book for 2019/20 in March next year?

We joined Britannia on a 2-week cruise at St Lucia in Nov 2016; we had planned in advance to book the Retreat, so I made a point of getting to the Spa desk as soon as we got into our cabin (can't remember if there's an opening time for desk whilst in port or not but I think it was about 5pm) and paid for the whole 2 weeks - there was availability.

Ironically the only time I saw a queue of people hopiong to book the Retreat was when I had to have the entry cards re-validated at Barbados a week later, and I recall that there was a lot more people at the desk trying to book it. In fact, whilst at the desk they sold out, leaving some people in the queue disappointed.

I think the capacity of the Retreat is about 60 in total; I'm guessing they must have a quota of weekly / 2 weekly passes set aside for each embarkation port & day, otherwise those joining the ship at Bridgetown on a Saturday would be at an unfair disadvantage. We certainly weren't put at a disadvantage when embarking at St Lucia...

Don't know whether it's a Britannia thing, or P&O thing, but the majority of people that post on these forums seem to do so just to have a whinge so I'll try to redress the balance.

We pre-booked the Limelight in advance last year (Aug for a Nov 2016 cruise) with Jaki Graham and we loved it. We happened to have a table right at the front of the stage, so I don't know if that's reflective of how far in advance we booked or not, but my guess is yes. However we were shown directly to the table on arrival so as far as I'm concerned that means it was pre-allocated.

We're not fussy eaters so found plenty of choice on the menu and it was one of the best cover charge meals we had on board. I guess it's horses for courses as far as whether you enjoy the act or not, but we did. It was a lovely chilled laid back atmosphere and made for a fitting last night on our cruise.

We booked a Saver fare for our first cruise (of any description) on Britannia last November. We were delighted with the cabin we were allocated (F112) and also got our preference of Freedom dining. Now I don't know whether we were just lucky, or it was because we booked a while in advance (Feb 2016), but we did chat with a couple of people at the dinner table who ended up being "upgraded" to directly above the Live Lounge and said it was noisy, when they were rehearsing as well as in the evening... then I got chatting to a guy on the deck below who booked 3 weeks before departure and got a cracking cabin with a huge balcony.... So it seems to be a bit of a lottery... I guess we have taken the advice similar to someone posting above and for our next cruise have decided to go for Select and have chosen a cabin, and specified "no upgrade" ;-)

We joined Britannia on a 2-week cruise at St Lucia in Nov 2016; we had planned in advance to book the Retreat, so I made a point of getting to the Spa desk as soon as we got into our cabin (can't remember if there's an opening time for desk whilst in port or not but I think it was about 5pm) and paid for the whole 2 weeks.

I had to have the entry cards re-validated at Barbados a week later, and I recall that there was a big queue of people at the desk trying to book it, and whilst I was at the desk they sold out, leaving some people in the queue disappointed.

I think the capacity of the Retreat is about 60 in total; I'm guessing they must have a quota of weekly / 2 weekly passes set aside for each embarkation port & day, otherwise those joining the ship at Bridgetown on a Saturday would be at an unfair disadvantage.

No, just the same as at Barbados I believe; we checked it in at the airport and the next time we saw it was outside our cabin :)

We joined Britannia at St Lucia in November (the first time P&O had operated fly cruises originating from there, I understand). Immigration was indeed on the aircraft (a bit haphazard tbh) then we boarded the bus. Britannia was indeed docked "karaoke side" (I distinctly remember as we drove past hearing someone making an awful mess of some song or other!), plus Tui Discovery was docked the other side. The embarkation was pretty painless, though having said that we were in Premium on the plane and therefore got off pretty quickly and were on the second bus to get to the ship. That was about 15:30 - 16:00 local if I recall and with the departure time not till 22:00 if you will have plenty of rum time...

Will attempt to bring this thread slightly back on topic.... we travelled on the first outbound flight fro Gatwick to pick up Britannia on 12th November 2016. Arrival at St Lucia was a bit chaotic given the aircraft arrived early and there were no buses to meet us. Plus the immigration was performed by a St Lucia border officer at the top of the aircraft steps, which meant for a very slow disembarkation. I second the feedback earlier that the trip on the bus was a bit hairy, only because on arrival the buses (lets call them minibuses) were totally inadequate for the length of journey / steep roads. At least on our return journey they were proper coaches and much more up to the job. Arrival at Britannia was pretty painless, I think it took us no more than about 20 minutes from arrival at the quay to reaching our cabin. Also our baggage arrived within about an hour of arrival in the cabin. Worth pointing out that we were in the Premium cabin on the Thomas Cook A330 from Gatwick; whether this made a difference to the speed of embarkation etc. I'm not sure. Plus at least for this season, only Thomas Cook are operating charter flights on behalf of P&O to St Lucia and not Thomson with their Dreamliner - but that might have changed for the 2017/18 season

We're on a sailing 12th Nov on Britannia from St Lucia and I was allocated a cabin today :)