Silver Sky Air Program - Ticketing Question

[JAT0303]

Hello - I'm looking from some advice from frequent Silversea cruisers.  We have cruised on Princess, Celebrity, Holland and Cunard and are familiar with their air programs but haven't run into the level of issues we are having with the Silversea program (scheduling, changing our agreed upon flights without talking with us and now a ticketing issue.)  

 

We have a Galapagos cruise book for October 19th of this year.  The cruise has been paid in full for over a year and we are using the Silver Sky Air Program for our flights.  We are adding flights to Lima, Peru first so have paid the air deviation fee and the flights were fully paid for in February.  All of our passport and contact information has been provided to Silversea.

 

The flights are on American Airlines.  While I have confirmation codes and can see the reservation, I can't change the pre-assigned seats until the flights are ticketed by Silversea.  As you might expect, the pre-assigned seats are among the worst on the plane. 

 

I have tried unsuccessfully (through our travel agent) to get the flights ticketed.  Silversea wants $150 pp to ticket the flights now.  The representative is telling my agent that they will ticket the flights 50 - 60 days before the cruise.  When I look at the terms and conditions for the promotional air fares they say "Silversea issues airline tickets within 90 days of sailing and only after final payment has been received."  (https://www.silversea.com/terms-and-conditions.html) The Silversea representative said that they have a policy that says they charge $150 pp for early ticketing and they do it about 60 days prior to the cruise.

 

I'd really appreciate any advice anyone can offer for how to get my flights ticketed now.  I'm not going to pay the $150 pp to ticket them now but would love to hear how others might have dealt with this issue.

 

Thanks in advance!

[les37b]

I would suggest you request your SS rep giving you this information provides you with where this is stated as I think he is in error and telling you porkies. Certainly that is the case for the UK and I dont think it would be any different for the US.

 

You are entitled to get your tickets issued so you can book seats etc and for the very reasons you are  describing. The downside in doing so, is those flights then cant be cancelled or changed and you'd end up with a bill if  you cancelled even outside the 120 days we all get.

 

Your TA is letting you down here IMHO.

 

 

 

[Colgal]

We had a similar situation 2 years ago when we booked our tickets through Seabourn- fortunately we have status with American Airlines and were able to use it to book our seats on British Airways without paying the fee. Good luck with your flights.

[Gourmet Gal]

I am experiencing this same issue with SS.  But in adding all the upcharges, $150 air deviation, $150 seat assignments, $600 extra for non-stop flights, my business class seats to Europe will still be half the price I could buy them for on my own.  However, the choice of flights has not been great and I am trying to avoid BA because they also charge another fee for advance seat assignments.

 

We are paying for the cruise in full early in order to take advantage of the 10% discount so I’m hoping to push SS to ticket early as well. Once ticketed I should be able to reserve seats myself(?), I hope.  Has anyone had luck with that?

 

Needless to say, the process has been quite difficult with SS compared to my experience with Tauck and Crystal.

[CruisinPashmina]

I’ve had no problems booking SS flights...Maybe because I have always used my trusted Travel Agent to make all the arrangements. 

[Colgal]

12 minutes ago, CruisinPashmina said:

I’ve had no problems booking SS flights...Maybe because I have always used my trusted Travel Agent to make all the arrangements. 

My TA was just as frustrated as we were- apparently she was only able to communicate through email and received the same responses as we did! 

 

 

[CruisinPashmina]

Golgal,

I guess I’ve been very lucky. Sorry you’ve had difficulties.

[Gourmet Gal]

5 hours ago, CruisinPashmina said:

I’ve had no problems booking SS flights...Maybe because I have always used my trusted Travel Agent to make all the arrangements. 

I have an excellent TA. We’ve requested specific flights after terrible options were offered and just settled on non-stop flights but with a significant upcharge over the advertised $1099 business class.  Seat assignments are still a question mark.  Not very impressive on the part of SS.

[Gourmet Gal]

In the interest of sharing my experience to hopefully help others...So just booked our cruise and flights are booked by SS but not ticketed.  We will be flying on different airlines on the round trip and I was able to log on to Virgin Atlantic and reserve our seats but was not able to reserve on TAP.  On TAP seats must be ticketed before they allow seat selection.  So seat reservation policies vary by airline.  $$ charges $300 pp to ticket early (before 60 days out) thus more than doubling the advertised “special” of $1050 business class upgrade because we also had to pay $700 more for non-stop flights not to mention the $150 air deviation.  Still, even if we pay the extra to select seats the ticket price is far less than booking the same flights on our own.  It just seems to be a rather convoluted process.