CHOICE AIR PLUS - Do They Really Get You There No Matter What?

[Gonzo70]

We booked on Choice Air to return from a TA, London to San Francisco. However, we are returning 26 days after the ship docks--so the 14 days quoted above is not correct.

 

Also, as soon as I had a confirmation number, I went into the Delta site, found our booking, put in our FF #'s, upgraded our seats on both legs, put in OUR contact info--in other words, it was JUST like booking directly with the airline, except we paid $595/pp; and Delta was charging 1194 POUNDS/pp!!!

 

They made a believer out of me on this flight, that's for sure.

 

The difference is in the fare class, not the types of things you are mentioning. What is the fare class of your ticket? So long as your flight is on time or not greatly delayed you will never know a difference. It is if your flight is canceled or severely delay where the fare class becomes a potential issue as you are last in line to be accommodated on a later flight and may not be able to have your ticket endorse to another carrier if the carrier you are ticketed on does not have any availability for a while and may not be able to be rerouted if the need were to arise. Yes, you can sometimes save a lot of money with Choice Air (especially one way transatlantic flights), but you take on added risk (as you usually receive a very unfavorable fare class). At least that is what the flying experts on the Cruise Air board have explained time and time again on this issue (and many of them are extremely frequent flyers and extremely knowledgeable on this topic). Since it looks like your flight is well after the end of the cruise, incurring a lengthy delay would not be disastrous to you (like on the front end of a cruise), so the reward (much cheaper price) appears to outweigh the risk in your case.

[boogs]

...At least that is what the flying experts on the Cruise Air board have explained time and time again on this issue (and many of them are extremely frequent flyers and extremely knowledgeable on this topic). ....

 

Well, then consider this the battle of the experts. You insist on providing information based on someone else's claims, but have no first hand experience yourself. One of these "I heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard ....." situations. Those of us who don't agree with you, on the other hand, do have first hand experience. Forgive me then for believing those of us here who do have experience rather than your mysterious "experts". It is what it is. Believe them, or believe us. That's your choice. Personally, it makes no difference to me who you prefer to believe. ChoiceAir works for me, has never let me down, and is recommended by many people who have had good results.

 

As my wise dearly departed grandfather used to say: "Everybody has a right to have a wrong opinion." :D

Edited April 17, 2012 by boogs

[richsea]

You paid $525 for a $2,000 ticket and you do not think you received a consolidator type fare? :rolleyes:

 

OK, enlighten me. If the tickets I purchased through Choice Air & were emailed to me by American Airlines were consolidator tickets, what exactly did I expose myself to by buying them? What's the downside? What am I missing?

[vickykay]

Can you book withh Chioce Air any time or do you have to chose it and commit at the time of booking your cruise? thanks!

[Lsimon]

I've only purchased Choice Air tickets once. They were on American Airlines for a flight from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale a year or two ago and the cost was lower than on American' s site at the time.

 

The tickets were the same fare class as the tickets I was considering buying direct on American. They were also upgradable under American's frequent flyer program. If they were consolidator tickets then there must have been some other indicator other than the fare code that was transparent to me.

 

I've bought other tickets through Celebrity but those were for a TA cruise before the Choice Air program began.

 

Personally, I always include choice air in my air fare shopping. If found that on most flights there is no price advantage so I'd go with the less expensive airfare. Occasionally I have seen a price advantage. The one place where the fares on Choice Air are fantastic are flights for Transatlantic cruises where you receive usually round trip type pricing for the overseas flight when bought through Celebrity while buying through the Airlines or most other other online agencies results in tickets at a much higher cost due to the lack of discounting on this route.

[Lsimon]

Can you book withh Chioce Air any time or do you have to chose it and commit at the time of booking your cruise? thanks!

 

I believe you can purchase it anytime after booking. We've looked into it several times and purchased once and all times were after we'd already booked our cruise.

 

You need to have a cruise booking number to purchase choice air flights, but you can look at the pricing without a booking number.

[cruisestitch]

Haven't read through the entire Choice Air sticky, but here's something relevant from post #1 in that thread as written by Host Andy. See last sentence:

 

 

Hi Everyone !

 

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Troy Martin, Director of Travel Services for Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. Troy shared with me what his team has been working on, with their guest air programs for Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, and Royal Caribbean. He said that if the opportunity came up to share what we discussed, that he would be glad to get the word out - and would also be happy to answer any follow up questions. Here's what I learned:

 

 

Background

 

In 2009 Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, and Royal Caribbean International rolled out a new air program called ChoiceAir, that was a major departure from the traditional cruise air programs. The drivers behind the new program were to improve customer experience and to adopt a model more consistent with today's more internet savvy consumers - and airlines. ChoiceAir was designed for travelers who make their purchases online at airline and consumer travel websites. It gives them visibility to all of the airlines' schedules and fares that are published, as well as some private negotiated fares on those same flights. The Cruise lines' guests are able to select their flights, study the fare rules, request special services, receive frequent flyer credit, and assign their seats. While this seems fairly basic for a travel website, prior to 2009... none of this was available when purchasing through a cruise line. Choice Air is currently offered in the US and Canada, though the company is evaluating opportunities for all of its international offices as well. In addition to booking ChoiceAir through your travel agent, you can go on the site and book your own. Two of the key value propositions are that the fares are very competitive, and the company provides their Assured Arrival Service. Since both of these offerings have been the topic of several Cruise Critic threads, Troy shared his insights on what is entailed.

 

Competitive Fares

 

RCCL offers nearly all of the same fares offered on consumer and airline websites - typically referred to as published fares, and some web fares. As is typical on the various websites, occasionally you will find a lower fare on one that is not available on the other. This is usually due to timing and airline inventory fluctuations, but for the most part you will see parity. On many routes, you will also find some special RCCL rates that have been negotiated with the airlines. These rates are especially good when shopping closer in, traveling internationally - and even more-so on open jaw (Fly into one city and out of a different city) or one way trips, when many published fares are more expensive. So while there may be some anomalies, you will typically find the same published fares - or better - on ChoiceAir. A frequent topic on Cruise Critic is the value and challenges with Consolidator tickets/fares. Those are not available through ChoiceAir. All ChoiceAir fares carry the standard airline rules, and even the contracted ones are similar. The travelers have all of the airline and RCCL services available to them, and are subject to the airlines rules and restrictions. Troy specifically emphasized that RCCL does not use consolidator-type fares.

[garycarla]

Well, then consider this the battle of the experts. You insist on providing information based on someone else's claims, but have no first hand experience yourself. ... ChoiceAir works for me, has never let me down, and is recommended by many people who have had good results..:D

 

As a frequent flyer myself, let me add a note here. You can both be right -sometimes. The fact that ChoiceAir has "never let you down" does not prove they are they greatest, or not. It only shows you have not had any problems, which most of the time is the norm.

 

What the poster was talking about is when a situation arises with a mass of people trying to get the last few seats on a new plane/schedule, etc.,the airlines do prioritize who gets them. More than once I have been in a situation where a flight was canceled and they now need to find a seat for 200+ people on flights that already close to full. As a top level flyer with that airline I was able to get a seat while they continued to make announcements telling everyone else they were "still working on things".

 

By the way, you can book direct with the airline and still be low on the totem pole, so to speak. With all this said, I see no reason NOT to book with ChoiceAir if the deal is decent.

 

Just reality.

[Gonzo70]

Well, then consider this the battle of the experts. You insist on providing information based on someone else's claims, but have no first hand experience yourself. One of these "I heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard ....." situations. Those of us who don't agree with you, on the other hand, do have first hand experience. Forgive me then for believing those of us here who do have experience rather than your mysterious "experts". It is what it is. Believe them, or believe us. That's your choice. Personally, it makes no difference to me who you prefer to believe. ChoiceAir works for me, has never let me down, and is recommended by many people who have had good results.

 

As my wise dearly departed grandfather used to say: "Everybody has a right to have a wrong opinion." :D

 

You can check it out first hand on the Cruise Air thread hear on Cruise Critic; you do not have to take my word for it. There are literally dozens of threads on this on the Cruise Air board with several frequent flyers speaking about the cautions of these types of tickets. It does not mean to never purchase Choice Air (I have used it myself once), but that one does need to learn about the pros AND cons so an informed decision can be made for each individual case. Someone only paying attention to the pros and people who have used Choice Air and not had a problem (there are threads on the Cruise Air thread where people have had a problem) are not making an informed decision on something that could end up having great importance.

[catgirl398]

All I can say is the airlines' service is very poor when there is a problem. They typically are full of excuses why they can't help you, which I hear, "we don't care". Having the ability to call ChoiceAir when there was a problem, and have a solution was priceless. To have a resource that will book you on another airline, no additional fees? I'm surprised at the negative vibe on this thread.

[Cruise Junky]

OK, enlighten me. If the tickets I purchased through Choice Air & were emailed to me by American Airlines were consolidator tickets, what exactly did I expose myself to by buying them? What's the downside? What am I missing?

 

As Gonzo pointed out, the issues come out when you have a problem. A lot of cruise air is quite restrictive to that airline on that route. For instance when we were coming back from Venice we missed our connection in Frankfurt. We were able to have Lufthansa switch us to an Air Canada flight and only got home a couple of hours late. Cruise Air "Can" have a lot of restrictions. In my instance, a lot of people have reported that their ticket would have only been good on Lufthansa on that route. For me it would have been the next day and if going the other way I could have missed my cruise.

 

No one's saying Cruise Air is a bad choice when everything goes right, it's when it goes wrong that there is a vast difference in what your ticket allows you to do.

[CathyCruises]

I totally get that and am willing to take the risk to get the lower price, but that's because I always pad my travel time 'just in case'. For me, if something happens and I get bumped, no big deal. If you have chosen to fly to Europe on the day your cruise departs, there are no guarantees no matter what code you have booked!

 

But I book an early arrival for more reasons than that. If something were to happen to my luggage, it allows some time for it to catch up to me. And it allows me to adjust to the time difference, and gives me some time to visit my departure city--just a lot of positives.

[Cruise Junky]

I totally get that and am willing to take the risk to get the lower price, but that's because I always pad my travel time 'just in case'. For me, if something happens and I get bumped, no big deal. If you have chosen to fly to Europe on the day your cruise departs, there are no guarantees no matter what code you have booked!

 

But I book an early arrival for more reasons than that. If something were to happen to my luggage, it allows some time for it to catch up to me. And it allows me to adjust to the time difference, and gives me some time to visit my departure city--just a lot of positives.

 

 

Exactly - and that's the best way to be about cruise air. It's a bargain, but you just have to know what can happen and build it in to your trip.

[boogs]

...on the Cruise Air board the tickets are essentially consolidator tickets (in terms of the fare rules/restrictions) ...

 

You can check it out first hand on the Cruise Air thread hear on Cruise Critic; you do not have to take my word for it. There are literally dozens of threads on this on the Cruise Air board with several frequent flyers speaking about the cautions of these types of tickets.

 

As Gonzo pointed out, the issues come out when you have a problem. A lot of cruise air is quite restrictive to that airline on that route. For instance when we were coming back from Venice we missed our connection in Frankfurt. We were able to have Lufthansa switch us to an Air Canada flight and only got home a couple of hours late. Cruise Air "Can" have a lot of restrictions. In my instance, a lot of people have reported that their ticket would have only been good on Lufthansa on that route. For me it would have been the next day and if going the other way I could have missed my cruise.

 

No one's saying Cruise Air is a bad choice when everything goes right, it's when it goes wrong that there is a vast difference in what your ticket allows you to do.

 

Exactly - and that's the best way to be about cruise air. It's a bargain, but you just have to know what can happen and build it in to your trip.

 

Please don't change the subject to make your point - we are talking about ChoiceAir, not Cruise Air. ChoiceAir is a more robust program that eliminates the negatives of the typical Cruise Air programs offered by other cruise line. Let's stay on topic and discuss ChoiceAir only to minimize the confusion to people trying to decide if this is a tool they could use.

 

Getting back to the topic the rest of us are discussing:

 

You apparently continue to ignore that the tickets are identical to what would have been issued by the airline itself as several people have reported. They work exactly the same as the tickets you buy on your own. They are NOT consolidator tickets.

 

Certainly, if something goes wrong, there is only so much ChoiceAir, yourself, or even the airline can do if it is a major disruption like weather shutting down all flights. I personally don't expect ChoiceAir to work magic. The don't have a fleet of charter planes waiting to jump in if a plane is taken out of service. They don't run the airlines so are able to prioritize the solutions for their customers first. And they certainly don't have a magic wand that they can wave and the problems go away.

 

What I expect, and what other people are reporting, is that ChoiceAir will work as our advocate to find the best solution to the problem. It can't hurt having an advocate on our side when a problem occurs, and a high level one at that. Who is the airline going to listen to the most - a infrequent customer in a panic, or a well established reservation desk who has experience in solving problems, who has at their fingertips a selection of possible solutions, who the airlines have probably developed a working relationship with, and in some cases, have even worked out agreements? I'll vote for ChoiceAir's voice to be more effective than just mine alone.

 

It's a matter of how much help you want if a problem occurs. If I can get more help for zero, and sometimes even lesser, cost, then that is an easy decision for me to make. Since the tickets are identical, how is that a bad thing?

Edited April 17, 2012 by boogs

[Gonzo70]

Choice Air is the same thing as Cruise Air in terms of what we are talking about.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Gonzo70

[boogs]

Choice Air is the same thing as Cruise Air in terms of what we are talking about.

 

I just spent about an hour looking through the CRUISE AIR forum to try to get a better perspective to be fair in this discussion. What I think is going on is confusion between the names CRUISE AIR and CHOICEAIR. CRUISE AIR appears to be a generic term used to describe all cruise line air reservation programs, while CHOICEAIR is exclusively for Royal Caribbean owned cruise lines, including Celebrity.

 

It appears that both terms are used almost interchangeably by many people, even some of us here in this discussion. I have seen some posts by Princess cruisers talking about booking through CHOICEAIR, which simply can't happen because a person needs to have booked a Royal Caribbean, Celebrity or Azamara cruise to book it. And Celebrity and Royal Caribbean cruisers talking about CRUISE AIR, which isn't the program they booked through. Also note that the some of the discussions on the CRUISE AIR forum date back many years, while the current CHOICEAIR program was established in 2009. The old program that Royal Caribbean used was similar to the typical CRUISE AIR program the other cruise lines still use.

 

We may be talking apples and oranges here. There are significant differences between CHOICEAIR that make it a better program than the typical CRUISE AIR program.

 

It's certainly a confusing topic, even if we stay in our appropriate air program. I know I had some confusion at first, but now understand the differences and feel confident that we are indeed getting a better product with CHOICEAIR.

Edited April 17, 2012 by boogs

[Christine Frances]

What makes it more confusing is that X/Azamara/RCL still offer "air inclusive" specials which is the "Old" Cruise Air program. With CruiseAir they assign the flights etc and you don't even know what flights you are on until close to the cruise date. I definitely will be checking Choice Air when we start looking for our flights to Europe next year.

[biker1972]

The real problem comes when the legal language about Choice Air is compared to the fluff of advertising.

From the fine print: "Celebrity uses commercial airlines...The airline tickets acquired by Celebrity are, in most cases, highly restrictive. The airlines providing air transportation may limit the ability to reissue, exchange or make changes to guests' air tickets. All airline tickets purchased via the ChoiceAir website or ChoiceAir Plus agent are the property of the guest(s) and are subject to the terms and conditions of the issuing air carrier.... Many of the airline tickets purchases via ChoiceAir or ChoiceAir Plus require the purchase of a cruise, and must be cancelled if cruise is cancelled...Celebrity Cruises acts as sales agent for the air carriers used...The air transportation is the responsibility of the air carrier used in conjunction with guests' Air/Sea program and is subject to and limited by the "Contract of Carriage" as specified by the air carrier for each ticket issued."

What are you getting when you purchase ChoiceAir tickets? Perhaps it is a diamond but maybe it is a pig in a poke. Know before you go!

[Christine Frances]

The difference is in the fare class, not the types of things you are mentioning. What is the fare class of your ticket? So long as your flight is on time or not greatly delayed you will never know a difference. It is if your flight is canceled or severely delay where the fare class becomes a potential issue as you are last in line to be accommodated on a later flight and may not be able to have your ticket endorse to another carrier if the carrier you are ticketed on does not have any availability for a while and may not be able to be rerouted if the need were to arise. Yes, you can sometimes save a lot of money with Choice Air (especially one way transatlantic flights), but you take on added risk (as you usually receive a very unfavorable fare class). At least that is what the flying experts on the Cruise Air board have explained time and time again on this issue (and many of them are extremely frequent flyers and extremely knowledgeable on this topic). Since it looks like your flight is well after the end of the cruise, incurring a lengthy delay would not be disastrous to you (like on the front end of a cruise), so the reward (much cheaper price) appears to outweigh the risk in your case.

[url=http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=29904378&postcount=18][/url]

Did you not ask similar question here and have it answered: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=29904378&postcount=18

Are you not fully confident in this answer?

[Gonzo70]

[url=http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=29904378&postcount=18][/url]

Did you not ask similar question here and have it answered: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=29904378&postcount=18

Are you not fully confident in this answer?

 

No, I have a healthy skepticism towards it. I hope it is true, but time will tell. The experts on the Cruise Air board feel as though a lot of what Celebrity is saying is marketing and that their is a lot of legalize in the fine print that basically makes nothing guaranteed. It is too early to tell if Celebrity would really spring for thousands of dollars for new transatlantic tickets if one's flight was delayed or canceled and the tickets could not be endorsed to another carrier that would get them there on time. The fine print has a lot of terms like "when required" and "when feasible" and encourages people to still purchase travel insurance. Again under certain conditions I would use Choice Air (if it saved a lot of money and I had ample wiggle room in case of a glitch). I would not use Choice Air to fly in hours before my cruise and feel comfortable and confident I am guaranteed to make the ship and/or that Choice Air would be well organized and quickly and easily catch me up to the ship. Time will tell how good a job they do when things go awry. So far there have been some instances reported on the Cruise Air board where everything was not so peachy keen. I have seen too many threads where people purchased Choice Air tickets that are scheduled to arrive 3-4 hours before their cruise is set to depart and stated they believe they are "guaranteed" to make sail-a-way. Nobody can guarantee this and if the tickets have an unfavorable fare class one is less likely to be able to quickly and smoothly "catch" the ship.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Gonzo70

[Christine Frances]

I wouldn't book any flight that would arrive 3-4 hours before our cruise departed:eek:

[Gonzo70]

I wouldn't book any flight that would arrive 3-4 hours before our cruise departed:eek:

 

I know you would not, but there have been several threads (some here, some on the Cruise Air board) where people have mentioned their flight is scheduled to arrive at 1pm, 2pm etc. on sail-a-way day and that they are not nervous because Choice Air guarantees they will make the ship. So long as you have ample wiggle room (and realize the potential issues with unfavorable fare classes) Choice Air can save a lot of money and be a good option.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Gonzo70

[boogs]

The real problem comes when the legal language about Choice Air is compared to the fluff of advertising.

From the fine print: "Celebrity uses commercial airlines...The airline tickets acquired by Celebrity are, in most cases, highly restrictive. The airlines providing air transportation may limit the ability to reissue, exchange or make changes to guests' air tickets. All airline tickets purchased via the ChoiceAir website or ChoiceAir Plus agent are the property of the guest(s) and are subject to the terms and conditions of the issuing air carrier.... Many of the airline tickets purchases via ChoiceAir or ChoiceAir Plus require the purchase of a cruise, and must be cancelled if cruise is cancelled...Celebrity Cruises acts as sales agent for the air carriers used...The air transportation is the responsibility of the air carrier used in conjunction with guests' Air/Sea program and is subject to and limited by the "Contract of Carriage" as specified by the air carrier for each ticket issued."

What are you getting when you purchase ChoiceAir tickets? Perhaps it is a diamond but maybe it is a pig in a poke. Know before you go!

 

People, people, people! It's been said here several times that the tickets are the exact same tickets you would purchase on your own. The same restrictions, the same conditions. These aren't specialty tickets. Why is this so hard to understand?

 

What is different is the added support you are given by purchasing these tickets through ChoiceAir. They don't modify the tickets to make them special. Instead, the provide a service to help you work through problems if they occur, such as flight delays, etc. This isn't brain surgery. It's simple. They have their entire organization there to help resolve the problem, and have much vaster resources than we, the affected passenger, would have standing in the airport wondering what to do next.

 

If you want an example of what this means, consider the difference between purchasing your cruise through Celebrity or through a Travel Agent. If you go with a TA, you get their support in determining what are the best flights for you, and their assistance in resolving any problems that may occur rather than having to deal with Celebrity directly. It's the same with these ChoiceAir tickets. You get an added level of support if, and only if, something goes wrong. Otherwise, everything else is the same.

Edited April 18, 2012 by boogs

[garycarla]

I know you would not, but there have been several threads (some here, some on the Cruise Air board) where people have mentioned their flight is scheduled to arrive at 1pm, 2pm etc. on sail-a-way day and that they are not nervous because Choice Air guarantees they will make the ship. So long as you have ample wiggle room (and realize the potential issues with unfavorable fare classes) Choice Air can save a lot of money and be a good option.

 

You really do not believe this, do you?

 

If the plane is delayed due to weather, mechanical, etc and does not get there until 10pm or the next day, you are not going to make the ship. It will usually leave exactly on time, sometimes a short hold awaiting a a group such as Choice Air passengers. But if they plane, or alternate flights will not arrive the same day, they can not get you aboard. Simple logic.

 

 

Not saying you should not use them or not. Just a reality check.

 

By the way, buying insurance will not help you either.

[fortinweb]

On our most recent cruise we used ChoiceAir. The airline we were booked with was having problems finding enough planes to maintain their schedule due to weather delays in their hub cities and our flight was cancelled. The reservation desk at the airport was swamped with people trying to reschedule. I assume their phone reservation system was also swamped due to the many people standing around, their phones to their ears, on hold.

 

I contacted ChoiceAir immediately. They arranged a flight on another airline leaving just thirty five minutes later, and we got to our destination in plenty of time. Although we had to accept whatever seats were available, we still got on a plane to our destination, though through a different connecting city. But we got there, stress free.

 

One call. Problem solved.