Globaliser

Does that mean that flying on Monday is out of the question? You don't say where you're heading, so it's difficult to know whether there truly are no decent alternative routings on Sunday.

If the airline cancels a flight mid-travel and the travel is within the scope of Regulation 261/2004, it comes into play regardless of whether compensation is payable. 261/2004 is not only about paying compensation. It's actually principally about more important things than that, including an obligation to get you to your destination (if you still want to go there), and to make sure that you're fed, watered and housed in the interim. Too many people think that 261/2004 is just about paying out lottery wins.

I suspect that what you see is Tottenham Court Road. Tottenham is a suburb of London about 6½ miles away from the British Museum, and the suburb has a reputation for being somewhere that you don't want to find yourself in by accident. Only using half of a road name can be risky.

Buy separate tickets for a different Vancouver to Chicago flight, and throw away the NCL ticket.

If your ticket includes a stopover (ie your Vancouver --> Los Angeles flight is booked for a day or more after you arrive in Vancouver), then you'll have no option but to check your bags only as far as Vancouver.

In almost every case, it's immigration only; bags will go directly to your final destination and you will clear customs there (although that is usually just a walk-through formality).

For what it's worth, I think that the nearest entrance to Bond Street Tube from the hotel is via the West One Shopping Centre, through the entrance on Gilbert Street. It's an unassuming doorway, but it is marked with an Underground sign. Once in the central atrium, take the (world's slowest) escalators down to basement level. However, if you're going to use the Elizabeth Line, it's probably better to use the new entrance on Davies Street.

So you don't get off at the wrong station, it isn't non-stop between Waterloo and Southampton - but it is direct. There should be plenty of announcements and signs to let you know when your station is about to be reached. Personally, I'd pay $12 - primarily for a more comfortable seat. For perspective, many train companies (including South Western Railway) have a long-running promotion called Weekend First, where for a small flat-fee supplement you can travel in first class with a standard class ticket. I think that for Waterloo to Southampton it's currently £10. Despite this and other ways of (legitimately) getting first class seats for very little more, I don't think I've ever seen first class busy on these routes except at peak hours in the direction of the peak travel. The only thing to add is that if you're planning to do this on Sunday 6 August 2023 (or the day before), do keep an eye on the relevant websites in case engineering works are scheduled for that day.

And in the UK, payment surcharges were in fact banned for a very long time, then permitted (and widespread) for a number of years, and then banned again under the Directive.

At major airports, it often takes a long time to taxi from the runway to the gate (and vice versa on departure). A flight's scheduled time of arrival does not refer to landing time; it refers to arrival time at the gate. So it's better to estimate from scheduled time of arrival.

I can see plenty of direct Amsterdam --> Paris trains on 17 June 2023, both on ns.nl and bahn.de.

For your specific requirements, you have no choice: it's the Hilton Garden Inn or nothing. Every other option - whether at the airport, near the airport, or in town - involves schlepping your luggage. And it's more difficult to schlep your luggage to some airport hotels than it is to schlep your luggage to some hotels in town.

For clarity, this protection is provided by specific UK legislation covering UK credit cards, for transactions between specific minimum and maximum values. Consumer protection in other countries may differ.

It depends on which cruise you're on. The Southampton cruise ship schedule will tell you which berth is planned for your sailing, and the port map will show you which terminal that corresponds to.

How do you come to that conclusion? There's about half a dozen direct fast trains every hour from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, and they get to Amsterdam faster than you can be driven there. There are good reasons why (as you yourself said) the train is the way to go.

It appears to be available for multiple nights if you book through third party sites, and Aerotel's own website says to contact them for stays that are longer than 24 hours. If you can't book the Aerotel, then it's Hobson's choice for your criteria: the HGI is the only other hotel in the CTA. Anything else will require a transfer. Even transferring from either T5 or T4 for an 0715-ish flight would incur a large proportion of the pain that you'd suffer from staying in central London. You'd have to allow 30-45 minutes for the transfer, and in the morning you wouldn't have to allow that much more to transfer from a central London hotel.

Are you flying from Toronto to Heathrow? If so, then I'm pretty sure that you arrive at T5. The flight from Heathrow to Oslo does depart from T3. What time is your flight from Heathrow to Oslo? Unless it's at silly o'clock in the morning, I think that your best option is actually a hotel in town. Transferring from Heathrow to central London and back again just to go sightseeing will drive you up the wall, and staying at the airport means that you'll risk depriving yourself of evening entertainment. If you do have a silly o'clock flight from Heathrow, then in addition to the HGI (which is really at T2) there is also the Aerotel at T3. Walking distances from both hotels to check-in is probably about the same (because of where the Aerotel is), but I think it should be an easier walk from the Aerotel. AFAIK, these are the only two hotels in the Central Terminal Area, where T3 is located.

Are you referring here to 26 July, after you get to Southampton at about 11 am? If so, then with a 5 pm sailing (Island Princess?) I think that visiting Winchester that day is too ambitious, and you can't easily catch up with the ship if it sails without you.

You will always have had ticket numbers. Without a ticket, you don't fly. The ticket is the document of value that shows that the travel has been paid for. It doesn't matter how confirmed your reservation is, or how accurately you have recorded your reservation/confirmation reference/number - if you don't have a ticket, you don't fly. Beyond that, there's nothing to add to what 6rugrats has said.

To be fair, it could (at least in theory) be done better than it is. A big problem with Heathrow is that (like many other global hubs) it's grown organically from an original layout dating from an era in which today's traffic levels would simply have been unimaginable. For example, it may originally have been sensible to put the Central Terminal Area where it was, but today it's a pretty mad concept that Heathrow is trying to manage as well as it can. If you could shut down Heathrow for a decade to rebuild it in a more rational way (see the very long-term plans that are in place), that would be wonderful - but of course, in real life that's completely impractical. Heathrow isn't unique in this respect. Imagine if JFK were a global hub! We've largely been saved from that chaos by the US' allergy to facilitating international-to-international connections. (Although, to be fair, if JFK had become a global hub then its layout would probably have evolved differently from how it actually has.)

However many airline miles/points you have, and however much the theoretical cost of an award ticket to Australia in first class, it's all useless if there's no availability for award tickets - which is a perennial problem for flights to Australia. You have to expect to fork out cold hard cash.

If it was for US immigration, that would be a fast clearance day! 🙂

But that's a different industry with different industry dynamics. What airlines have learnt is that providing good customer service can build up lots of goodwill and warm fuzzy feelings to passengers, who will then decide how to purchase their next flight by reliably selecting the cheapest option in the market. "I'm so loyal to Fly Me Airlines - they treat me so well - but I just couldn't pass up the Treat-Me-Like-Dirt Airlines fare that was $50 cheaper. I'll go back to Fly Me Airlines next time." Next time, of course, someone else may have a can't-miss fare that's $50 cheaper. There's no other way to explain the rampant success of airlines that do treat their passengers like dirt, and make no secret of it. In Europe, Ryanair is the shining example. In addition, no individual airline passenger is important to an airline, however loyal they think they are. Individuals are rarely worth more than several thousand dollars a year of revenue to an airline (and airlines' profit margin on that is notoriously tiny and volatile). If you control travel spend of several million dollars a year, the airline may push out the red carpet for you. Otherwise, forget about being rewarded for your "loyalty" - neither you nor your loyalty are important to the airline, even if it makes you feel good about yourself to say "I'll never fly XXX again".

The OP shouldn’t need a passport check either, you are only in transit in the UK. (It would have been different pre Brexit.) No, it was the same before Brexit: no need to clear immigration for a USA --> Heathrow --> Brussels connection. There will be a passport check on boarding, but that's an ID check for the airline to ensure that the passenger who's boarding has the same name as the boarding pass. Funnily enough, I've just posted this in another thread:

You need to keep your eyes open. The Flight Connections route is signed with purple signs, so if you look for those you will be in the correct stream. You also want to make sure that when the purple signs give you a choice of terminal, you're following the route for Flight Connections Terminal 5. (On the assumption that you are flying from Denver to LHR, you will both arrive at and depart from T5 - no terminal change involved.) Your inbound flight will very probably arrive at a satellite building. The Flight Connections route will take you to the main building, and into a big hall where immigration queues are to the left and connections are to the right. You're an international connection, so you will have your boarding pass checked, then go upstairs to clear security, and then you'll be in the main shopping area. Ironically, with 9 hours between flights you will actually have time to choose to clear immigration and do something other than hang around in the airport terminal (assuming no big delays to your inbound flight). You could either take a train or Tube in to central London - you'd have time for lunch somewhere or to visit one of the South Kensington museums, for example - or (as is sometimes suggested here) you could pop over to Windsor, which was handily built underneath the Heathrow flightpath.