Globaliser

On this particular point, the associated loss of time can be reduced by flying to London City airport. You'll get out of the airport faster, and it's closer to central London. (It's even better if you're flying in the other direction.)

You don't. You're being hysterical about this. You've had two - merely two - trips on which your flight times were changed, and now you seem to be spinning this into some sort of "American Airlines will do this to everyone on every single trip" story. That's complete cry-baby rubbish.

If your schedule is so tight that this is "unworkable", then maybe air travel is not for you? A rescheduled flight, a faulty part, an air traffic control breakdown, a bad weather event at some place you're not flying to that affects your aircraft ... the list is endless, and any one of those things can easily set your plans awry by 2, 4, 6 or 24 hours. People who fly a lot or know the industry well - including those you are criticising - set their expectations according to experience, and they develop enough resilience to deal with the problems that inevitably arise, often through nobody's fault. If you think American has been unique in disrespecting you on this occasion, then you really just haven't flown other airlines enough.

Do you have two separate bookings for the two flights? If the two flights are on the same booking, then you should have a lot more options that don't require you to abandon one flight altogether. But if you chose to make two separate bookings, then that choice will inevitably limit your options when one flight is rescheduled and you refuse to be a bit flexible. In any case, "other airlines are available" - and if the alternative airline that you've picked has more non-stop flights, then I'm not sure what your complaint is?

Although in general, one would expect non-stop flights between two countries to be operated only by airlines from those two countries, that isn't the case where one of the countries is Iceland, Norway or an EU country. Any airline from those countries can fly non-stop between any point in those countries and the US. Consequently, a Norwegian airline called Norse Atlantic is currently operating daily non-stops between Rome Fiumicino and JFK, in addition to the flights operated by ITA, American, Delta and United. Norse Atlantic also operates other flights including a daily non-stop between Paris Charles de Gaulle and JFK. In addition, there are sometimes special agreements to allow an airline of a third country to operate a non-stop route. For example, Singapore Airlines is currently operating a daily non-stop between Frankfurt and JFK; and Emirates has a daily non-stop between Milan Malpensa and JFK.

I haven't got it any more, but I think that Michael Lazaroff's email specifically said that these would be on Summit. Of course, anything could change until everyone is contractually bound (and possibly even afterwards).

For a similar story, see this thread and this post within it. If you need a phone number, for goodness' sake get it from the airline's website, not from Google.

This is actually all pretty common for prospective charters. My guess is that cruise lines don't take their own announced sailings off sale until the contract with the charterer has become firm/unconditional/similar, or reaches some particular commercial milestone. At that point, those who have booked an affected sailing as a normal cruise get their bookings cancelled by the cruise line with some sort of compensation. The same thing can happen on the charterer's side. If the proposed charter sells really badly but the charterer isn't yet fully locked in to taking the ship, then the charterer might cancel all the bookings it's taken and cancel the charter, paying to the cruise line whatever penalty the contract specifies. But this isn't likely to happen with these Jazz Cruises charters - the SJC sailings will sell out quickly, TJC will reliably get to ~100%, and Botti will as usual be the one that has to be pushed a bit harder. Do we know where the drydock is taking place? I noticed that the first sailing date of the block of charter dates is one day earlier than Celebrity's own plan of 29 January 2025 ex-San Juan. I expect that the ship's likely to have to reposition for its first post-drydock cruise anyway, and Miami or Fort Lauderdale could be a day closer than San Juan to the drydock location. At the end of the block of charter dates (25 February 2025), it's not hard to imagine a 4-night repo to San Juan for the ship to pick up the existing schedule ex-San Juan on 1 March 2025. All of that is speculation, of course, but geography and maths necessarily impose limitations on the permutations.

For casual dining in the immediate area, I'd also give a shout out for a newish place that's very close to the hotel: Chez Antoinette on Palmer Street - we were impressed with both quality and value there. And there are actually a couple of upmarket restaurants nearby: one is a Michelin-starred Indian called Quilon on Buckingham Gate, and the other is The Pem inside the Conrad opposite St James's Park Tube. Although we haven't been to either of them, I believe that they're both highly regarded by at least some reliable commentators. However, I suspect that they may not be the sort of thing that the OP is looking for. I think it's fair to say that the area is pretty quiet in the evenings. However, it's not unsafe and I don't have any concerns about personal safety around there.

Hey, were you that DOT Permanent Secretary who got a motorway to Oxford built decades before Cambridge got one? 😁

Yes, from London Waterloo. I think that Portsmouth Harbour is the station for the cruise terminal.

Thanks. That gets these sailings out of the holiday period, and it also seems to make more sense to have TJC and Botti in successive weeks.

Be careful here. Not "Tottenham", which is a suburb of London about 7 miles away from the British Museum - and is somewhere a tourist probably shouldn't go unless they really mean to. "Tottenham Court Road" is the name of both the station and the road for which it is named.

And Tottenham Court Road is close than any of these to the main entrance. And using either Holborn and Russell Square would mean you'd have to change trains to get to Waterloo.

No: Dover, Harwich, London, Portsmouth and Southampton are all different ports.

No. If you arrive at Heathrow by the Elizabeth Line, you will have to pay the Elizabeth Line premium (about £7 per person, IIRC). Sticking to the Tube is significantly cheaper. The most economical way is probably to take the bus. But I really don't recommend this with luggage, or for a central London to Heathrow journey, unless there really is no alternative.

I'd put a little money on it being a recurring problem at the moment: a shortage of aircraft.

There are lots of possible reasons. We don't know who's given the quotes, or for what. Perhaps the more expensive one only operates particularly luxurious vehicles. Or it may be quoting for a larger vehicle than the cheaper company is quoting, even though the larger vehicle is far bigger than you really need; that may perhaps be because the more expensive company doesn't have any right-sized vehicles, or any available on the day that you want. It's unlikely that any of the usual suspects will simply fail to show up, although inevitably mishaps will occasionally happen (which is one of the reasons I don't push any individual company by name). Anyway, if you're at the airport and you are unlucky enough to have a no-show, you always have backup. You just go to the official taxi rank and get in a black cab. It will cost more, but it will get you there safely without you having to take the Tube, a train or a bus. Be careful with the pricing, though. £95 is about what I'd expect to pay. $95 is a bit low and I'd wonder who it was coming from.

£95 is not far off what I'd expect to pay for a car that takes that many people. For context, if you were to pay a walk-up fare on the Heathrow Express, it would be £100 in standard class for the four of you. And that would only get you to Paddington, which isn't really quite central London. And you'd have to move and carry all your luggage yourself. As Ashland asks, what were you expecting to pay?

Yes. IIRC, the ticket for this includes the ferry from Kingswear (the southern end of the railway line) across to Dartmouth and back.

It was a joke. Sorry.

It's the FAM annual works outing.

Indeed: any of the London-based "usual suspects" should do a decent job for this bit. They're basically all much of a muchness. On the rare occasions that I take a car to/from the airport, I use one of them out of habit - except for the one time when they were fully booked by the time I tried, whereupon they referred me to another of the usual suspects, who were just as good.

I've never done this myself, but my guess is that it'll be significantly more than that - perhaps closer to £20 per cab from the CTA (ie from T2 or T3). Apart from anything else, there's the £3.60 Heathrow surcharge to be added to the meter rate. And it can take a good few minutes to get around the CTA road circuit and into the tunnel. I'm not going to re-hash the "why on earth would you stay at the airport for 24 hours" argument in thsi thread, but if we're getting in to the detail of food and drink in the culinary wasteland of the Bath Road, I'd suggest the Sipson Tandoori. It would need a short minicab ride from the Hyatt Place, but it's probably more interesting than anything you could walk to. It's more likely that the driver will pretend to hate you to try to blackmail you into a bigger tip. A run to the Bath Road and back should be within the time limit for going straight back to the terminal and bypassing the feeder park. The drivers who seriously hate this sort of thing just switch off their light and drive empty back in to central London.

Also interesting to see DL231 on 29 April.