This Wiil Be Our Last Time On Oceania Air

[Polecat]

To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, last August we booked The April 22, 2012 Venice to Athens cruise to include air. February 14th we received our air information on Delta and our confirmed seat assignments were all fine. Yesterday, March 22, I checked our flight info again and was shocked to find that all of our seat assignments had been changed and for the 11 hour flight from Athens to JFK we are now stuck in the center 2 seats of a four across row. Our TA called Oceania and was told that Oceania has no record of our previous seat assignments and there are no other seats available on this flight. The TA called Delta and Delta had no trouble finding our previous seat assignments and said that Oceania cancelled our previous reservation on February 19 and didn't rebook us until 2 days ago and these were the only seats left. Our TA is still trying to rectify the atrocity. This is our 27th cruise and 4th on Oceania and nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Any suggestions?

[LHT28]

Just keep checking with Delta online ..sometime seats open up closer to the date or ask at check in they usually have seats for those that do not check in online

[orchestrapal]

To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, last August we booked The April 22, 2012 Venice to Athens cruise to include air. February 14th we received our air information on Delta and our confirmed seat assignments were all fine. Yesterday, March 22, I checked our flight info again and was shocked to find that all of our seat assignments had been changed and for the 11 hour flight from Athens to JFK we are now stuck in the center 2 seats of a four across row. Our TA called Oceania and was told that Oceania has no record of our previous seat assignments and there are no other seats available on this flight. The TA called Delta and Delta had no trouble finding our previous seat assignments and said that Oceania cancelled our previous reservation on February 19 and didn't rebook us until 2 days ago and these were the only seats left. Our TA is still trying to rectify the atrocity. This is our 27th cruise and 4th on Oceania and nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Any suggestions?

 

Many will not agree: take the credit and book your own air and control your

situation! ;)

[ebobh]

Looking at the OP's previous experience, if you have a total of 31 cruises and one bad air experience, it might be a blip that will not recur since you'll ensure each time after this that it doesn't. For some, the ease of just having O or another line do the air is what is sought (as little stress as possible, etc.) to ease the process of planning one's vacation.

 

For others, especially those who travel a lot, who accumulate points, and want more control over their specific arrangements, it is most often better to take the air credit and do your own. To do so, we use our TA to help identify possible routing and times, and then I most often book directly with the airline to be able to use points and get my seats assigned (check sites that let you see which seats are better on your craft with that airline, too- especially worth it if you are picky re where you may want to sit while in that steel tube for hours on end).

 

With O, we did their air the first time we sailed with them, and wound up routing from Miami through JFK to get to San Diego. The trip was complicated by equipment problems at JFK, so what should have been a one-stop cross-country trip became a 14-hour marathon covering much of the Continental USA...needless to say, we have done our own air since, both for O and other lines. I'd just rather control the exact routing, choose and confirm seats, and get the payment over with before I incur the cost of the cruise (paying in segments seems to ease the pain), so for us, it's the way to go. For others who want to do a little less and roll the dice re seats and routing, sticking with the cruise air may be better (and sometimes cheaper). Now if O would follow Regent and offer $999 business class, we'd be set (they have started doing so for some of their special offers, so there is hope).

 

Regards, Bob H

[eddmel]

We book our own air but have found it is not always worry-free. On an upcoming cruise out of Athens one carrier abandoned the market and never notified us (we had purchased the tickets 2 months before). We discovered this by checking on our booking. After getting the fares refunded, we then booked on another carrier and selected our seats. Again, checking on our booking we discovered that there was a change of equipment and we were assigned seats not to our liking (we corrected this promptly).

 

While booking our own air gives us a measure of control, we know it still requires monitoring to uncover important changes that the carrier makes.

[JimandStan]

To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, last August we booked The April 22, 2012 Venice to Athens cruise to include air. February 14th we received our air information on Delta and our confirmed seat assignments were all fine. Yesterday, March 22, I checked our flight info again and was shocked to find that all of our seat assignments had been changed and for the 11 hour flight from Athens to JFK we are now stuck in the center 2 seats of a four across row. Our TA called Oceania and was told that Oceania has no record of our previous seat assignments and there are no other seats available on this flight. The TA called Delta and Delta had no trouble finding our previous seat assignments and said that Oceania cancelled our previous reservation on February 19 and didn't rebook us until 2 days ago and these were the only seats left. Our TA is still trying to rectify the atrocity. This is our 27th cruise and 4th on Oceania and nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Any suggestions?

 

Have you looked into upgrading to Economy Comfort? The cost is $80 per passenger per segment, but you may find seats that are more to your liking.

[YoHoHo]

Have you looked into upgrading to Economy Comfort? The cost is $80 per passenger per segment, but you may find seats that are more to your liking.

They may not have the option to upgrade depending on the class of their tickets purchased by O. We can't for our upcoming Riviera cruise (not Delta airlines)

[Mura]

I know we didn't have the option of upgradeable Delta tix when we were booking the August 2012 Black Sea cruise. The O contract doesn't permit upgradeable tix. Bummer. (Medallion members on Delta can upgrade their Oceania tix but you have to do a LOT of flying each year to qualify for Medallion.)

 

We ended up using Continental miles on Lufthansa (booked on our own).

 

Mura

[LHT28]

We were able to upgrade on AC last year for flights to/from USA

It may just have been a late check in deal

With KLM I can upgrade 90 days out but not booked through O on the flights we had

 

Other times I usually book our own

[LAexNY]

I know we didn't have the option of upgradeable Delta tix when we were booking the August 2012 Black Sea cruise. The O contract doesn't permit upgradeable tix. Bummer. (Medallion members on Delta can upgrade their Oceania tix but you have to do a LOT of flying each year to qualify for Medallion.)

 

We ended up using Continental miles on Lufthansa (booked on our own).

 

Mura

 

We've had the same problem with United/Continental. Oceania buys "bulk tickets" and they are not eligible for upgrades, either with miles, miles + co-pays, or global upgrade vouchers.

[JimandStan]

We've had the same problem with United/Continental. Oceania buys "bulk tickets" and they are not eligible for upgrades, either with miles, miles + co-pays, or global upgrade vouchers.

 

Yes, but the DELTA TICKETS ARE upgrade-able. I know because Hondorner and I just did it!

[Mura]

Interesting Jim/Stan, because they were quite adamant with me that we could NOT. Of course, we were trying a couple of months ago and maybe something has changed. (Delta was very specific with me as to what fare is upgradeable and what fare Oceania will book, and never the twain would meet. At least not then.)

 

But to answer Lyn, it depends on the contract that Oceania has with a particular airline. And because one airline (Delta) allegedly doesn't allow for an upgrade, another (Air Canada) may well permit it.

 

Jim, I was willing to pay a bonus to get an upgradeable fare but they told me "no way Jose".

 

And I was being nice! (When I get upset with someone on the phone that isn't always the case ...)

 

Mura

[JimandStan]

Interesting Jim/Stan, because they were quite adamant with me that we could NOT. Of course, we were trying a couple of months ago and maybe something has changed. (Delta was very specific with me as to what fare is upgradeable and what fare Oceania will book, and never the twain would meet. At least not then.)

 

But to answer Lyn, it depends on the contract that Oceania has with a particular airline. And because one airline (Delta) allegedly doesn't allow for an upgrade, another (Air Canada) may well permit it.

 

Jim, I was willing to pay a bonus to get an upgradeable fare but they told me "no way Jose".

 

And I was being nice! (When I get upset with someone on the phone that isn't always the case ...)

 

Mura

 

Your situation was very different, Mura, because you were trying for tickets that were upgrade-able to true Business Class, and the upgrade that I am discussing is into Economy Comfort.

[hondorner]

Maybe it depends on what type of upgrade one is trying to get. I asked the Delta Rep what it would cost in miles to upgrade to business class, and she said that while we have enough miles, the class of ticket did not permit it. On the other hand, we were easily able to do a minor upgrade from economy to economy comfort (4" extra legroom, 50% more recline, priority boarding (after business, I'm sure) and complimentary beer, wine or spirits, all for $80 per person.

 

However, we were originally assigned seats in the middle section of row 35, and the only economy comfort seats left were in the middle section of row 17 (Jim and Stan are right behind us in row 18; such a gentleman, he booked first and left us seniors the seats 3 feet closer to the door ;)).

 

The suggestion to book one's own is great if one has plenty of miles or plenty of money; but normally the air credit from Oceania does not begin to cover my costs if I book myself. I take the air credit when the ship is sailing from Miami, because I can drive there, but I've ony taken an air credit one time when I didn't drive, on a domestic flight from San Francisco to Miami that I booked for a little less than the credit by using SouthWest.

 

Business Class is flat out of reach unless I could cover it with miles, even at the $999 per person one way. Ye Gosh, that's almost $4,000! And, without that deal, Business Class would cost more than the cruise! No way I'm paying more for 9 hours in the air than I do for the whole cruise. I can suffer that long...

[Mura]

Your situation was very different, Mura, because you were trying for tickets that were upgrade-able to true Business Class, and the upgrade that I am discussing is into Economy Comfort.

 

Good point ... I would have been willing to upgrade to Economy Comfort, the choice wasn't presented to me. I was probably asking the wrong questions!

 

Lesson learned ...

 

M

[tropicalkerry2002]

was FABULOUS on our flight from Rio to Atlanta!

Delta said no problem putting us there, but we couldn't do it until the flights were ticketed by O, which usually happens about a month before the cruise, acc to our TA. I asked her to ticket us at about 6-8 wks precruise so we wouldn't miss out.

She explained there was some risk in ticketing us early...as I understand it WE would not be able to change flights without paying fees, but if DELTA made changes to our schedule, we wouldn't have any fees to pay.

It worked out beautifully, and the seats were great!

Now I wish EVERY airline had it, especially Lufthansa and AC, who are flying us for our next cruise!

[ORV]

Glad to hear that about the Delta economy comfort being good as we booked those on a Celebrity TA we're doing this fall. It was through Celebrity's Choice Air and as soon as I had a confirmation number I was able to upgrade to EC online. We got the last exit row seat that will recline. Beware that not all of the exit row seats have recline, only the last ones.

[Love.II.Cruise]

To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, last August we booked The April 22, 2012 Venice to Athens cruise to include air. February 14th we received our air information on Delta and our confirmed seat assignments were all fine. Yesterday, March 22, I checked our flight info again and was shocked to find that all of our seat assignments had been changed and for the 11 hour flight from Athens to JFK we are now stuck in the center 2 seats of a four across row. Our TA called Oceania and was told that Oceania has no record of our previous seat assignments and there are no other seats available on this flight. The TA called Delta and Delta had no trouble finding our previous seat assignments and said that Oceania cancelled our previous reservation on February 19 and didn't rebook us until 2 days ago and these were the only seats left. Our TA is still trying to rectify the atrocity. This is our 27th cruise and 4th on Oceania and nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Any suggestions?

 

So sorry to hear of your air issues.

 

This has happened to us on another cruise line. My DH proposed on this cruise and our 12 hr flight home we were on different parts of the plane! We fortunately found someone to switch with us once on board. This was a Princess cruise in Australia. A couple days before we set sail we were seated together - but somehow changed before we flew home.

 

We got married, I didn't change my last name and voila, it happened again on Celebrity coming home from a South American trip. They fixed it before we boarded. Again, nothing was abnormal on our tickets before we left for vacation - we thought we would be seated together.

 

Unfortunately, we find when we book with cruises, we have no control. Typically we book our own air now. But on our Oceania cruise coming up, we are doing an air deviation and using Oceania air. I have found doing an air deviation, we have never had any problems with cruise lines.

 

After reading several posts, we are seriously going to look into Economy Comfort!

[hondorner]

I will add that, even doiing a deviation, we had to request to be ticketed in order to book the EC seats. You typically make this rquest throiugh your travel agent; another good reason to be certain your travel agent knoiws the ropes at Oceania. To be "ticketed" is a request for Oceania to pay for your ticket right away. We had a bit of nervousness because our request took place over a weekend; we sat and watched several of the EC seats being sold and were overjoyed to get anything, let alone the perfect seats.

[Love.II.Cruise]

I will add that, even doiing a deviation, we had to request to be ticketed in order to book the EC seats. You typically make this rquest throiugh your travel agent; another good reason to be certain your travel agent knoiws the ropes at Oceania. To be "ticketed" is a request for Oceania to pay for your ticket right away. We had a bit of nervousness because our request took place over a weekend; we sat and watched several of the EC seats being sold and were overjoyed to get anything, let alone the perfect seats.

 

Are these EC seats only on Delta? How soon out do we need to plan for our deviation?

[soe-tan-toe]

Many will not agree: take the credit and book your own air and control your

situation! ;)

 

We are considering taking our first Oceania cruise next summer. It's great to know we have the option of arranging our own flights.

 

 

Can you please elaborate on the type of credit we can get for booking our own flights? Do we get the credit in the form of OBC? Or can we actually get our total cruise fare reduced? Lastly, how is the amount determined?

 

Thank you!

[LHT28]

We are considering taking our first Oceania cruise next summer. It's great to know we have the option of arranging our own flights.

 

 

Can you please elaborate on the type of credit we can get for booking our own flights? Do we get the credit in the form of OBC? Or can we actually get our total cruise fare reduced? Lastly, how is the amount determined?

 

Thank you!

The credit is different on different cruises just ask your TA or when you go to O website you can do a booking with air then look for the same cruise without air.(you do not have to actually pay to see the differences)

They just deduct from the cruise price shown

[LHT28]

Are these EC seats only on Delta? How soon out do we need to plan for our deviation?

KLM also have EC seats

 

You can do a deviation at 270 days out or close to that... Ask your TA

[hondorner]

Are these EC seats only on Delta? How soon out do we need to plan for our deviation?

United also has a similar plan, called Economy Plus, I believe, We booked those on a flight from Miami to Vancouver a couple of years ago. We're flying home from our upcoming cruise on British Airways, which has something called World Traveler Plus, but currently I'm confused by their website and plpan to vcall them for details. Other airlines may have similar programs but wildly different rules (it appears that BA actually charges an extravagant fee just to change a seat before check-in, let alone book an extra -- that's the confusion I mentioned).

[YoHoHo]

I suspect 'Economy Comfort' is Delta's brand name for this category. Some other airlines do have this category. British Airways calls it 'Premium Ecomony;. It is betwwen Business class and Tourist class. DW calls it Middle Class. Several year back we took this option on a long flight to Rome and it was well worth it. that said we paid several hundred $ more - not $80. If you can get it for that price it is a steal.

 

The ability to upgrade, as I mentioned earlier and more clearly by hondoner, depends on the category of the ticket (W, Y Z, Q) etc, the airline, and as Don pointed out, how you are paying for it ( I did not think to ask if cash made a difference). These seats purchased by cruise lines are a sort of bulk buy of cheap classes and can be very limited in what is allowed or not. There is a very excellent post on the cruise air board explaining how the cruise air works and why there can be problems.

 

We have used O's cruise air four times and four times happy. A little less so for this upcoming cruise because there are flights I would prefer but they are not on one of O's 'prefered' airlines so would have been a lot more money and would have been better off to buy direct. also this was a last minute choice so we made the deviation late and choices are much more limited.

 

If you are certain you will not cancel or have insurance to cover it or accept eating the cost if you cancel, you should book the deviation as soon as possible. that will give you the greatest choice in routes and airlines, never mind seats. If you do cancel before Final Payment you will still be out the $250 (per couple) administrative fee for the deviation (plus, I assume, if there were any additional fees for the flight choices that too.)