Regent Flights - with and without deviation

[papaflamingo]

8 hours ago, CardowMD said:

Please correct me if I am wrong, but if you get flights thru Regent and there are last minute delays or itinerary changes, the will adjust your flights accordingly. With all of the issues around the world this was important to me. In addition, even with a $500 deviation on one flight, going thru RSSC saved me about $2500.

Like Rallydave said... we used Custom Air to deviate for our flight to Hong Kong in Feb.  About 3 weeks after we booked the flight (through Regent) United changed the schedule to a much closer connection... which was unaccpetable to me.  I contacted United and they couldn't make any changes as the flight was not paid for.  I contacted Regent and we couldn't make any changes without a big up charge so I decided to keep the flight.  The Regent Agent did tell me the day that the tickets would be paid for though, 60 days out. So when that date came I called United and we were able to change the tickets to leave a day earlier with a 13 hour layover in SFO and still arrive on the original date (although 12 hours earlier).  There was zero cost to change those flights.  I never told Regent, but on my final paperwork it showed the actual flights I had switched to so Regent was informed by United as to the changes. 

So, bottom line, once the flights are booked if something changes the Airlines will adjust it if necessary, but if you want to adjust it you have to work through Regent until the ticket is paid for, then, at least with United, you can call the airline itself and see if they'll make any adjustments.  But YOU need to monitor your flights for changes, Regent's only responsibility is booking them for you.  They don't monitor them to my knowledge.  

[TheShag]

Looking for some advice please. I know the challenges of air travel these days [especially departing from a smaller airport - Auckland]. I have paid the deviation fee and got my flights along with seat selection. Although we are weeks away from the 60 day 'payment date' [cruise departs 20/12/24], I see that some of the booked UAL return flights segments [on the UAL website] appear to no longer be operated. In order to potentially avoid an even more horrendous flight itinerary, should I call RSSC Air and explore alternatives? Will this incur a charge? Thanks kindly!

[rallydave]

11 minutes ago, TheShag said:

Looking for some advice please. I know the challenges of air travel these days [especially departing from a smaller airport - Auckland]. I have paid the deviation fee and got my flights along with seat selection. Although we are weeks away from the 60 day 'payment date' [cruise departs 20/12/24], I see that some of the booked UAL return flights segments [on the UAL website] appear to no longer be operated. In order to potentially avoid an even more horrendous flight itinerary, should I call RSSC Air and explore alternatives? Will this incur a charge? Thanks kindly!

Before calling regent check your itinerary on UAL website. When there are changes like you describe the airline automatically changes your flights and are updated where you can see them. If you are happy with changes if not then contact regent. Once your flights are ticketed you can make changes by phoning UAL

 

Any changes by airline can be modified for free no matter how small a changes at no charge and IMHO much easier to do direct with airline but only after flights are ticketed at 75 days out as more changes likely 

Edited June 15 by rallydave

[TheShag]

Great advice. 😁Thanks 

[Jim_Iain]

I've been reading this thread for the past couple hours.  Excuse me if it has already been asked and answered but wasn't able to find it via search.

 

We are looking at booking our first Regent Seven Seas cruise from Cape Town to Miami via Lisbon for May 2025.   Ideally we would use RSS Business Class from San Francisco.  

 

Ideally we would like to fly to Cape Town a week early and take a side trip on our Own  to Victoria Falls and a Safari.  Is this possible or is this considered a deviation?    I've traveled on business worldwide my entire career and very comfortable booking our own air but their prices look better than what I project at this time (that far out). 

 

I wanted to get a general idea of options before calling RSS.

[rallydave]

17 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

I've been reading this thread for the past couple hours.  Excuse me if it has already been asked and answered but wasn't able to find it via search.

 

We are looking at booking our first Regent Seven Seas cruise from Cape Town to Miami via Lisbon for May 2025.   Ideally we would use RSS Business Class from San Francisco.  

 

Ideally we would like to fly to Cape Town a week early and take a side trip on our Own  to Victoria Falls and a Safari.  Is this possible or is this considered a deviation?    I've traveled on business worldwide my entire career and very comfortable booking our own air but their prices look better than what I project at this time (that far out). 

 

I wanted to get a general idea of options before calling RSS.

Easy answer any flight change from arrival in day of embarkation and day of disembarkation is a deviation. 
 

and you can deviate I believe for 30 days and you don’t have to fly in Cape Town. You can fly to johansburg or other cities if you choose. No telling the cost difference though. 

[Jim_Iain]

37 minutes ago, rallydave said:

Easy answer any flight change from arrival in day of embarkation and day of disembarkation is a deviation. 
 

and you can deviate I believe for 30 days and you don’t have to fly in Cape Town. You can fly to johansburg or other cities if you choose. No telling the cost difference though. 

 

Thanks.... I guess we will just have to start out figuring out if this cruise is for us and then calculate the deviation cost vs booking on our own.

[rallydave]

40 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

Thanks.... I guess we will just have to start out figuring out if this cruise is for us and then calculate the deviation cost vs booking on our own.

Another hi up for you. In order to get a price for your deviation you have to have booked the cruise, wait until 210 days before embarkation then contact regent air with a non refundable $75 charge unless you accept the offer. 
 

then if you don’t accept their offer you have to contact regent air again and possibly the previous offer is no longer the same price or even available. Not easy but is what it is. 

[vegasdriven]

Just thought I would come back to let readers know how my experience went with booking Regent air.

I researched options for months before we were able to book the flights (210 days before with a deviation). I was getting nervous as of course the flights kept going up in price.

I was prepared to pay a fairly high differential, as even at a couple of thousand above what our air credit was would still be a substantial savings compared to booking ourselves. My biggest concern was that we would be stuck on a sub par business experience, or with an itinerary that would stress us out to start the trip.

It was not exactly a simple process, but my TA dealt with Regent even though at one point I asked her if it might be better for me to deal with them directly. She said why would I want to spend hours on hold when she was happy to do it for me.

I had given her a detailed list of my favourite options, and she came back with the ones that would work- almost all, most with no extra cost, and just one that would have cost $2000 more, which strangely enough was the most inexpensive of the bunch.

It took about 4 days, but we got our first choice for no extra cost over the air credit for our cruise, coming in at less than half the cost to purchase through the airline.

 

Needless to say we are thrilled with Regent air.

If anyone has any specific questions to do with the process, I will be happy to answer if I can!

[GoNavyFamily]

On 6/17/2024 at 11:52 PM, vegasdriven said:

Just thought I would come back to let readers know how my experience went with booking Regent air.

I researched options for months before we were able to book the flights (210 days before with a deviation). I was getting nervous as of course the flights kept going up in price.

I was prepared to pay a fairly high differential, as even at a couple of thousand above what our air credit was would still be a substantial savings compared to booking ourselves. My biggest concern was that we would be stuck on a sub par business experience, or with an itinerary that would stress us out to start the trip.

It was not exactly a simple process, but my TA dealt with Regent even though at one point I asked her if it might be better for me to deal with them directly. She said why would I want to spend hours on hold when she was happy to do it for me.

I had given her a detailed list of my favourite options, and she came back with the ones that would work- almost all, most with no extra cost, and just one that would have cost $2000 more, which strangely enough was the most inexpensive of the bunch.

It took about 4 days, but we got our first choice for no extra cost over the air credit for our cruise, coming in at less than half the cost to purchase through the airline.

 

Needless to say we are thrilled with Regent air.

If anyone has any specific questions to do with the process, I will be happy to answer if I can!

You said it took 4 days...so I assume it was not settled in the first phone call to Regent Air.  My understanding is that you have to pay $75 per phone call. Did your TA get charged each call? Was the total of all call charges then credited to the deviation fee incurred?

[chamima]

36 minutes ago, GoNavyFamily said:

You said it took 4 days...so I assume it was not settled in the first phone call to Regent Air.  My understanding is that you have to pay $75 per phone call. Did your TA get charged each call? Was the total of all call charges then credited to the deviation fee incurred?

 

You only get one $75 charge per booking. So if all of the calls were about booking the same flight then there would be only one charge. (I know this because the original Regent agent I spoke to booked us on the wrong date and when I called back to change it I wasn't charged a second $75)

If I had changed my mind and wanted to change my flight I would have incurred a second fee.

[GoNavyFamily]

14 minutes ago, chamima said:

 

You only get one $75 charge per booking. So if all of the calls were about booking the same flight then there would be only one charge. (I know this because the original Regent agent I spoke to booked us on the wrong date and when I called back to change it I wasn't charged a second $75)

If I had changed my mind and wanted to change my flight I would have incurred a second fee.

That makes sense under a circumstance when you accepted a flight and have additional questions. The impression I got was that the poster's TA called more than once to inquire about different options BEFORE accepting an itinerary.

[vegasdriven]

 We were only charged the custom air fee. I am not sure what happens about the $75 call fee if your TA handles it.

[frankpc123]

If you accept one of the deviation options provided by Regent, then the $75 is then included in the overall Air Dev fee.

Our TA (technically not the TA but the Customer Experience team that the travel agency has) interfaced with Regent on the Air Dev process with lots of input from us. We still paid the $75 fee upfront and then it was deducted from the overall Air Dev fee.

 

[vegasdriven]

It seemed to be more complicated as we wanted to leave out of Seattle or SFO, and being as we are in Canada. Something to do with the dollar exchange.

We ended up taking the one from Seattle, and I am not sure how she arranged that because looking at Google flights, as well as ita matrix from my end there was a flight originating in YVR, and connecting an hour and a half later out of Seattle.

We didn’t want that as we wanted to spend the night before the flight in the departing city to avoid the stress of flying issues causing us to possibly miss the first flight.

When I looked at Seattle as a starting point the flight was not available, but somehow my TA made it happen.

[1982CruzStart]

4 hours ago, GoNavyFamily said:

The impression I got was that the poster's TA called more than once to inquire about different options BEFORE accepting an itinerary.

It can take mutiple phone calls to finalize an acceptable itinerary. Once you/your TA initiate discussions with Regent Air on a booking, you pay the $75 and then you can have as many phone calls as you need to try and finalize your air. All calls are under the same $75 fee.  If you don't agree on an itinerary you forfeit the $75. If you finally do agree on an itinerary the $75 is deducted from the $175 fee for 1 person on the booking and you pay the balance. 

[GoNavyFamily]

2 hours ago, 1982CruzStart said:

It can take mutiple phone calls to finalize an acceptable itinerary. Once you/your TA initiate discussions with Regent Air on a booking, you pay the $75 and then you can have as many phone calls as you need to try and finalize your air. All calls are under the same $75 fee.  If you don't agree on an itinerary you forfeit the $75. If you finally do agree on an itinerary the $75 is deducted from the $175 fee for 1 person on the booking and you pay the balance. 

That's great! I was under the impression if you didn't like any of the choices on your first call and called back again to discuss other options, you were charged another $75.

[GoNavyFamily]

2 hours ago, 1982CruzStart said:

It can take mutiple phone calls to finalize an acceptable itinerary. Once you/your TA initiate discussions with Regent Air on a booking, you pay the $75 and then you can have as many phone calls as you need to try and finalize your air. All calls are under the same $75 fee.  If you don't agree on an itinerary you forfeit the $75. If you finally do agree on an itinerary the $75 is deducted from the $175 fee for 1 person on the booking and you pay the balance. 

I'm not sure you are correct or maybe we are not talking about the same situation. Per Regents site on air deviation, your first call is $75 but if you don't accept the offered itinerary within 3 days, then....

 

After the Custom Air flight option expires, to search for additional flight options an additional $75 non-refundable fee will be added to the reservation. 

[1982CruzStart]

1 hour ago, GoNavyFamily said:

I'm not sure you are correct or maybe we are not talking about the same situation. Per Regents site on air deviation, your first call is $75 but if you don't accept the offered itinerary within 3 days, then....

 

After the Custom Air flight option expires, to search for additional flight options an additional $75 non-refundable fee will be added to the reservation. 

I didn't mean that if they offered you something and you didn't do anything about it and the offer expired there might not be an additional charge. However if you are going back and forth with them it can certainly take more than 3 days and you shouldn't get charged. When we did our latest deviation we took longer than 3 days to get to what we wanted and we were not charged a second $75 fee. We were working through our TA  and she would send us something, then with time differences it would be the next day before we responded etc over a number of days. 

[chamima]

1 hour ago, GoNavyFamily said:

I'm not sure you are correct or maybe we are not talking about the same situation. Per Regents site on air deviation, your first call is $75 but if you don't accept the offered itinerary within 3 days, then....

 

After the Custom Air flight option expires, to search for additional flight options an additional $75 non-refundable fee will be added to the reservation. 

 

20 minutes ago, 1982CruzStart said:

I didn't mean that if they offered you something and you didn't do anything about it and the offer expired there might not be an additional charge. However if you are going back and forth with them it can certainly take more than 3 days and you shouldn't get charged. When we did our latest deviation we took longer than 3 days to get to what we wanted and we were not charged a second $75 fee. We were working through our TA  and she would send us something, then with time differences it would be the next day before we responded etc over a number of days. 

 

 

Once you verbally accept an offer you will get an email from Regent giving you three days to confirm in writing that you accept that offer.

That's where the three days comes in. Once you receive that written offer, if you don't accept it in three days it disappears and you have to start the process again. If that happens you will be charged another $75 to start the process again.