molecrochip

They Tui planes were filled first as they were arranged first…. that means those who booked first got Tui. No science here. A change.org petition never gets a Parliamentary debate. You need to use the official petitions website to get that. Along the way, those petitions are vetted for matters government can actually intervene on. As this is a commercial matter, the government can’t intervene and would close the petition anyhow….. probably why it’s on change.org in the first place!

It’s about 50:50 depending upon maintenance, drills and other ships in port.

There’s been a mistake on this group somewhere along the way. The letter I saw clearly showed Vigo being swapped from first til last, not Cadiz.

Not cost cutting… it’s try to stop people who buy shares, claim credit and then dispose of their shares way before their cruise.

I’d keep going the same method until broker can’t do it for you.

It’s been in use in the US brands for about 3 months. It allows realtime verification of your holding by connecting to your broker account. They only get to see that you hold X Carnival shares. They don’t get to see anything else. It does allow them to check that you still hold the shares at/near to sailing date as access remains live until revoked. However, it’s a US app, and a lot of UK brokers aren’t signed up due to data protection differences. Likewise doesn’t work with certain ISAs held with banks. In this case, you just upload a pdf/image of your proof like you currently email.

If the 12 hour delay has been in the U.K. then the returning passengers could have kept cabins over night. Some might have needed to swap cabins but it would have been possible as outbound passengers would also have been delayed. Unusually, this was a delayed that occurred after all new passengers arrived restricting P&Os options.

To add: I think P&O could have helped with the comfort factor, however I do believe the ship was feed incorrect information from head office because head office had been fed incorrect information from Maleth. Why were the cruise cards withheld on leaving the ship. This was to stop re-entry. You’re disembarking a group in the middle of the night, last thing you want is someone to split and re-enter the ship. You’re limited to announcements for finding someone during the hours of darkness. By retaining the cruise card, they can’t scan back on. Its not normally a problem as you have lots of staff hearding people around and the ability to find/announce for people during usual change over days.

Not necessarily wrong @tring The outbound plane landed at 7pm into Antigua. If a new crew (already in Antigua) was available then a 9/10pm departure would have been possible. The fact that there was a further 12 hour delay in Antigua suggests that this was an issue. Now, if I was P&O expecting a different flight crew for the return leg, I would then be asking my guests to return to the muster point at 5pm to be disembarked to the airport. This was the time they were asked to arrive. This to me suggests that P&O were not aware of the crew issue until the plane arrived in Antigua. By this point, the existing passengers had to free up rooms. My enquiries today suggest that if a new crew had flown out as passengers then a 5am departure was possible. Remember P&O advised of an 4.40am flight time. Instead, it was the same crew so 7am departure. Add in the security hours operated in Antigua and you have a situation that was not of P&O’s making. There does however have to be serious questions over the information Maleth provided to P&O and whether they breached their charter contract.

Possible, Maleth did send an extra aircraft and crew out to Bermuda to bring the passengers home. I'm presuming the original crew brought the passengers back on the 26th and the replacement crew brought the original plane back a couple of days later when all checks were complete.

This is the bit I don't understand and am asking questions about. It is never the same crew who do UK-Caribbean and then Carribbean-UK in the same day. Cabin crew need 12(?) hours off between end of one shift and start of another. Fine on a dialy route as its one overnight. Routes not operated 7 days a week can be more difficult. I know Virgin/BA/Tui bounce their cabin crew around the Islands to avoid long layovers. With Maleth only operating two days a week, either a set of crew get a 6 day break in the Caribbean or they return to London as passengers. The flip applies with the return crew. If true here, passengers are suggesting that Maleth are so short of crew that they created a 12 hour delay to enable the same crew to work the return flight. For most airlines its cheaper to have crew fly as passengers than keep a aircraft out of use for 12 hours downline.

I have no inside knowledge on this incident however…. I want to put one fact out there… as I understand it. Antigua is not a 24/7 airport. Its security checkpoints usually close at 10pm and reopen at 7am. Antigua could extend the opening hours from 10pm till 2am ish to process P&O passengers as staff were on site. They could not open early as staff would not be present. Therefore either passengers arrive at 1am ish and flight could possibly leave at 0730. Or passengers arrive after 7am and the plane was leaving at closer to 10am. A further delay. A hard choice to be made. I don’t know who made the decision.

If you contract a good TA or P&O direct, I believe you can have a discount on basis of only 1 set of flights across two cruises. However no discount anymore if you book cruise only and want to choose only flights.

P&O don’t have any planes so they fundamentally cannot be at fault for aircraft delays. Turning to the package holiday contract, that gives P&O responsibilities towards passengers for issues such as flight delay even if not its fault. P&O have to provide board and likings at certain points etc. They also have to rearrange the travel. That rearranged travel will then be dependent upon the back-up plane options contractually agreed with the charter operator. If the wait is too long, P&O may separately decide to use scheduled or other operators but whether their costs are met would be dependent upon the contract or ad-hoc agreement with the charter operator.

It’s broadly 6 on a Friday and 6 on a Saturday. Of the 6, usually it’s 5 charters and the other plane split across BA and Virgins 3 scheduled London flights. Arvia increases that by two plane equivalents on each Saturday (operating BGI/Antigua) on alternative weeks.

P&O via Thomas Cook have used the Air Tanker aircraft before. It was around 2015-2017 and they used A330 aircraft which had been acquired from Condor (from memory). They didn't have seat back TVs and there was much disapproval then. Mentioned on here: https://www.airtanker.co.uk/about/what-we-do/civil-flying Sadly, the A321LR can't make it to the Caribbean.

Agreed. Its not that simple. Tui keep most of their long haul aircraft available for P&O at weekends during the winter. During the week, they fly them for their own customers to the Middle East, Far East and the Caribbean. These planes are in use 13 days out of 14 with day 14 being maintenance. So you're aware of the sheer number of planes that were retired during the Covid period which has stripped all the spare aircraft out of the major airlines, in order to avoid them going bust. BA gave up their B747 fleet, and have not long brought their last A380 back into serice, Virgin gave up their B747s and A332s. Tui parked up a number of their Dreamliners and only have this season brought the last back into service. 2024 is where new deliveries for BA and Virgin will add a little slack back into the fleet programs. It was not expected that airtravel would recover so quickly - those doomsayers were wrong. I've heard rumours of BA, Virgin and Norse (formerly Norwegian) being used.

This is plainly incorrect. Barbados use a scissor lift truck to board mobility impaired passengers. This is exactly what Gatwick or Manchester do if the plane is on a stand instead of an airbridge. This is standard practice in many airports worldwide - and is the same method as boarding the catering. It is the responsibility of the airport - not the airline. The charter contract will include the terms of contingency aircraft, and aircrew. Technical failures of aircraft are not the fault of P&O. As I've stated many times previously, the charter market is not easy at present. Indeed P&O have not filled Arvia in the way they had intended due to restricted aircraft availability. P&O have been trying to secure a new long term charter partner to replace Thomas Cook since they went bust. There just currently isn't a partner available. Virgin were happy to step in during 2021 and 2022 as their route network was not back to full capacity post Covid and they had spare aircraft. This year that was not the situation hence turning to a new charter provider. Barbados airport runs on a Caribbean time. It creates its own delays due to the light regulation unlike somewhere like Heathrow where airlines are penalised to keep to time. This is not in the control of P&O. As long as P&O have delivered all the passengers to the airport on time, its then the responsibility of the airport and the airline. Additionally, the continued bad weather in the UK is throwing additional delays into the process. Agreed. P&O have publicly acknowledged that its not ideal but the other alternative was cancelling significant numbers of passengers. Its not for P&O to have contingency plans. It will be specified in the contract between P&O and the charter operator what the contractual contingency plan is. Its then for the airline to manage. They have a comprehensive flight contract however unless you're looking at a route like London - New York with multiple flights a day, any delay will be significant. A fair summary, I've had a 24 hr delay before on a package holiday when a Tui plane when tech, and we had to wait overnight while it was fixed.

Yes - weather related.

Merry Christmas everyone. Looking forward to another wonderful year at sea.

I could argue adults only venues but I do take your point. But there is the question @Selbourne, should P&O be operating two different pricing structures? And if yes, how do you suddenly introduce a premium pricing structure onto say Ventura when up until a point it’s been operating on a standard family based pricing structure?

P&O are not struggling to fill their ships. Running at 98% capacity, I believe. Deep discounting is winding down although some good deals this spring. If you take Ventura or Azura onto those longer itineraries, why do they need to ban kids. The few that are on there will get lost in the number of adults. You’re suggesting that as people get older they will switch to smaller ships to replace those gone before. I’d suggest that if you like, say, Britannia, why would you switch? Agree that Aurora/Acadia’s ultimate demise will likely be the end of the old P&O. I don’t expect Princess to replace Island Princess either in due course. Carnival must certainly have looked at the numbers. This is an option, but I’d have them in school holidays too - to offer the mix. That said, I go back to my earlier comments about why need them? P&O have been less aggressive with such offers since the Pandemic however do note some schools start as late as October.

In most cases.

What remedial work are you expecting? The ships are maintained daily.

Grand class can transit the Panama Canal including Azura/Ventura.