Maybe I got lucky

[Kunjaqueen]

If you can adjust flights it may be a good thing to check prices today if you're flying around Christmas.

 

I just scored round 6 trip flights, SEA to FLL for less than $250 each in December!

 

I used Princess EZ air but it was a huge price drop from the original flights!

[Keith1010]

Glad to hear that you got good pricing.

Do you change planes? 

 

Keith

[Kunjaqueen]

No!  Thats whats even cooler!  SEA is an Alaska hub which helps!

 

[CruisingSince2012]

Booking it thriough Princess saved you money. That is not luck, just a smart decision. My airfare for next year is $1,023 including taxes and fees because it was booked through the cruise line. Regular price for everyone who books it directly is in the $1700s.

[Globaliser]

7 hours ago, CruisingSince2012 said:

That is not luck, just a smart decision. My airfare for next year is $1,023 including taxes and fees because it was booked through the cruise line. Regular price for everyone who books it directly is in the $1700s.

 

The plural of anecdote is not data.

 

Just because you happened to save money on this one isolated occasion by booking through the cruise line, that doesn't mean that everyone will save money booking through the cruise line, nor that they will always save that kind of money. You are probably the one who simply got lucky this time.

 

In any event, you probably have very little idea about how the rules, terms and conditions of what you have bought through the cruise line compare to the rules, terms and conditions of what you would have got if you had booked directly with the airline.

 

In other words, comparing the two prices alone may be like comparing apples to cheese. Not all tickets are the same, even if they're for a seat in the same cabin: you are never only buying the right to fly, but a whole package of other rights, benefits and restrictions as well. When you have more experience of air travel, you may begin to see how these can differ from ticket to ticket - even for the same cabin on the same flight - and how they can affect a specific trip.

 

On this specific occasion, the cost saving may well have made it worthwhile. On other occasions, there might have been serious disadvantages to booking through the cruise line. The potential problems are well-known and frequently discussed here. See this thread, for example:-

 

 

[sumiandkage]

I will say that if your home airport tends to have limited competition and consequently high ticket prices in general, the cruise air options start to look good, even after adding some of your own money to get the deviations you want. I'm looking forward to my first river cruise next year, and the travel agent for my group was able to get me the flights I would have picked on my own for a couple hundred dollars less than the published rate, even with us paying more for deviations and different dates and such. (We're adding several days on our own on both ends of the cruise)

 

Ticketed on Delta, which is my preferred airline because their customer-facing employees are actually empowered and encouraged to fix problems during IRROPS regardless of status or fare class once they've got control of the ticket, and I've had them do some, um, really creative rebooking in the past in order to get me to Scotland after yet another summer thunderstorm ground stop at ATL.  (They changed a deep discount V fare into a full price Y fare so they could push us into a revised routing that included sunrise at Schiphol among other things)  Bulk/consolidator fares with Delta get me the same number of elite-qualifying miles as if I'd booked a ticket in a V fare class myself (I checked the fine print) and will get me about 80% of the redeemable miles I  might have gotten otherwise. 

 

Can things go wrong yet? Any time you're connecting through Atlanta in the summer, the weather can make things get a bit weird. But I also feel like the deviation charge let us end up with a ticket fro man airline we've got a certain trust level with and a flight schedule that's consistent with healthy sleep patterns- flight home is at noon, which I figure lets us get up at a normal time, have breakfast and leave the hotel and have plenty of time to make a noon departure. 

 

Figure it's worth any additional schedule risks and slightly fewer redeemable miles to save enough money to cover hotel expenses when we're exploring Switzerland on our own for a few days before we get on the ship. 

[candy4040]

We have used Princess Ez air on at least 5 times (probably more).  We have always gotten an exceptional deal.  We have a cruise scheduled for February from Fort Lauderdale to Buenos Aires.  The Princess price was more than $1900 (each) less than Delta and we were able to select our own seats.  If their prices go down they also let you have the cheaper price.  Also - you can cancel up to 45 days prior to cruise and incur no penalties.    Princess also gave us a $300 credit on air fare as part of a promotion package.