Air reservations through HAL

[RocketMan275]

3 minutes ago, bichonsx2 said:

how do you get to Flightease?

You have to have a trip booked to get to  flight ease with Holland. 

You access flight ease from Manage My Bookings.

Open Travel Planning.

Then pre and post travel.

Then open flights.

 

If you don't have a cruise booked, use this trick.  Holland and Princess use the same engine.  The flights and prices are the same.

Pretend you're booking a cruise on princess that has the same beginning and ending as the one you want to see on Holland.  Once you open the cruise on princess, there is a button Flight Quotes.  Then you do a fake flight booking to see what's available and the price.  It's much easier than it sounds.

[kayakcove]

I am 310 days out and seeing flexible business class fare RT Copenhagen that are great. Some of the comments in this thread about locking in a flexible fare and then being able to change  later if better price appears. confuse me. The part about locking in the fare seems to conflict with the opening section on the HAL site about flexible fares.

"Prices and Availability are not guaranteed until the cruise and air booking are paid in full. No fees will be charged for changes and cancellations made prior to the cruise final payment due date."

The "not guaranteed" does not sound price is locked in.  

What am I missing?

[RocketMan275]

35 minutes ago, kayakcove said:

I am 310 days out and seeing flexible business class fare RT Copenhagen that are great. Some of the comments in this thread about locking in a flexible fare and then being able to change  later if better price appears. confuse me. The part about locking in the fare seems to conflict with the opening section on the HAL site about flexible fares.

"Prices and Availability are not guaranteed until the cruise and air booking are paid in full. No fees will be charged for changes and cancellations made prior to the cruise final payment due date."

The "not guaranteed" does not sound price is locked in.  

What am I missing?

I asked my TA the same question.  She has her own shop and is highly respected here on CC.  She says she has never seen any one have a price increase when they've reserved flights.   I have seen prices go up and go down.  But, once I had booked the flights, prices never changed.  I was able to cancel and refare three times.

[bichonsx2]

23 hours ago, RocketMan275 said:

You have to have a trip booked to get to  flight ease with Holland. 

You access flight ease from Manage My Bookings.

Open Travel Planning.

Then pre and post travel.

Then open flights.

 

If you don't have a cruise booked, use this trick.  Holland and Princess use the same engine.  The flights and prices are the same.

Pretend you're booking a cruise on princess that has the same beginning and ending as the one you want to see on Holland.  Once you open the cruise on princess, there is a button Flight Quotes.  Then you do a fake flight booking to see what's available and the price.  It's much easier than it sounds.

I realized it right after I had hit send!  lol  all is good.  We are booked and looking so forward to this cruise! 

Thanks

[renee00]

Does anyone know if Flight Ease always starts working at 330 days before a cruise? Because I'm at 329 now, but I get this error every time I try to look at flights: "We are unable to process your request. Please try again later or call us at the number listed on the page for assistance."

[dfish]

7 minutes ago, renee00 said:

Does anyone know if Flight Ease always starts working at 330 days before a cruise? Because I'm at 329 now, but I get this error every time I try to look at flights: "We are unable to process your request. Please try again later or call us at the number listed on the page for assistance."

It needs to be 330 days before the return flight after your cruise.   

[renee00]

Just now, dfish said:

It needs to be 330 days before the return flight after your cruise.   

Aha! Thank you! I'll try again in a few weeks then.

[dszrew]

On 9/7/2019 at 7:32 PM, RocketMan275 said:

I asked my TA the same question.  She has her own shop and is highly respected here on CC.  She says she has never seen any one have a price increase when they've reserved flights.   I have seen prices go up and go down.  But, once I had booked the flights, prices never changed.  I was able to cancel and refare three times.

 

Do you cancel and rebook, or is there a way to modify the existing reservation? Hopefully you do it online and don't have to call someone?

[RocketMan275]

43 minutes ago, dszrew said:

 

Do you cancel and rebook, or is there a way to modify the existing reservation? Hopefully you do it online and don't have to call someone?

You can cancel and rebook anytime prior to final payment.  Remember, you don't have to make a deposit at the time of booking, you pay for the whole reservation at final payment.  I cancelled and rebooked twice on my flights leaving this weekend.  All done on line.

This is just my opinion but I think when they say the price may increase, they are talking about the price of flights not already booked.  I did see that.  One day a flight might be $2000.   A few days later, the identical same flight might be $2500.  A week later, it might be $2200.  I booked my flights back in April.   I rebooked the same flights in May when the price went down.  I rebooked again a month later when a better flight had a price drop which made it competitive with the flights booked in May.

[kayakcove]

13 minutes ago, RocketMan275 said:

I cancelled and rebooked twice on my flights this weekend.  All done on line.

Have a great trip. After your response earlier, I went online and booked flights and then immediately cancelled as it did not look like they had my son's middle on this booking to match his passport. TA got that fixed and rebooked the next day.  The selection of flights was pretty good and was able to choose my favored airline.  Booked 3 RT Business class Raleigh NC to Copenhagen total of $4150 less than on carrier site.  

Airfares just don't make much sense sometimes. I booked direct for Mekong river cruise in Feb. when it seemed like price was down, 3 days later dropped $700 on premium economy,  rebooked with the penalty and still way ahead.  Yesterday price was up over $2100 each over my fare with penalty

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, dszrew said:

 

Do you cancel and rebook, or is there a way to modify the existing reservation? Hopefully you do it online and don't have to call someone?

Lets give you a current example.  A few weeks ago (as soon as booking opened at 330 days from our return) we booked Bus Class flights to Tokyo (return from Vancouver).  In the few weeks since that initial booking we have changed our flights twice in response to some additional flight options that appeared on HAL's air booking engine.  Our most recent change actually changed airports (because HAL opened up some convenient flights to Haneda).  When I make a change I simply pull up my already booked flights (on the HAL booking engine) and hit the modify button.  Once I choose different flights the software gives me a warning that I am about to cancel the original flight and also calculates and cost difference.

 

The official language used for Flexair does say that prices are subject to change up until the time you actually ticket the flight.  Unless you intervene your flights will not be ticketed until about 45 days prior to your cruise.  While prices could change the history of using Flex Air is that there are rarely any price increases.   If somebody is concerned about that possibility they can ask Princess to immediately ticket the flights which means you must immediately make payment.  But once ticketed any changes are subject to some pretty big fees (hundreds of dollars per ticket) and cancellation may get you a zero refund.  Most folks do not ask for early ticketing for this reason.

 

Hank

[RocketMan275]

1 hour ago, dszrew said:

 

Do you cancel and rebook, or is there a way to modify the existing reservation? Hopefully you do it online and don't have to call someone?

You can cancel and rebook anytime prior to final payment.  Remember, you don't have to make a deposit at the time of booking, you pay for the whole reservation at final payment.  I cancelled and rebooked twice on my flights leaving this weekend.  All done on line.

This is just my opinion but I think when they say the price may increase, they are talking about the price of flights not already booked.  I did see that.  One day a flight might be $2000.   A few days later, the identical same flight might be $2500.  A week later, it might be $2200.  I booked my flights back in April.   I rebooked the same flights in May when the price went down.  I rebooked again a month later when a better flight had a price drop which made it competitive with the flights booked in May.

[RocketMan275]

I had never tried Flight Ease.  Up until this year, we always drove to the port.  About 15 hours each way.  We're retired and had the time.  Now, we're older and simply do not wish to drive so we've started flying.  My TA told me she'd never seen a Flight Ease increase in over 15 years.  So, I could book Flight Ease several months out and pretty much know I'd locked in a price.  If I found better prices, I could cancel with flight ease and go elsewhere.  But the thing is, I found price drops of about a third on Flight Ease.  And, that was on Flights from Alabama to Vancouver.  

Our next cruise, after this one, is on Zweiderdam in December 20.  I intend to book flights on flight ease as soon as they open and keep checking prices.

[dszrew]

45 minutes ago, RocketMan275 said:

You can cancel and rebook anytime prior to final payment.  Remember, you don't have to make a deposit at the time of booking, you pay for the whole reservation at final payment.  I cancelled and rebooked twice on my flights leaving this weekend.  All done on line.

This is just my opinion but I think when they say the price may increase, they are talking about the price of flights not already booked.  I did see that.  One day a flight might be $2000.   A few days later, the identical same flight might be $2500.  A week later, it might be $2200.  I booked my flights back in April.   I rebooked the same flights in May when the price went down.  I rebooked again a month later when a better flight had a price drop which made it competitive with the flights booked in May.

thanks for the information. just booked for our upcoming trip in June and fares are half off what the airline is charging. I expect prices to drop in 3-5 months but if not I've got good prices. 

ran into an issue booking where I had some wrong name and birthdate information. took an hour on hold on the phone so I'm glad I can make flight changes online without going through that again.

pulled up my flights right after on Delta and was able to move into preferred seats.

[RocketMan275]

38 minutes ago, dszrew said:

thanks for the information. just booked for our upcoming trip in June and fares are half off what the airline is charging. I expect prices to drop in 3-5 months but if not I've got good prices. 

ran into an issue booking where I had some wrong name and birthdate information. took an hour on hold on the phone so I'm glad I can make flight changes online without going through that again.

pulled up my flights right after on Delta and was able to move into preferred seats.

Good for you.

[VermeulT]

can you use flightease for one way (and then points on my own) for the return?

[kazu]

3 minutes ago, VermeulT said:

can you use flightease for one way (and then points on my own) for the return?

 

Of course 🙂. You can use it for the departure or arrival flight only or both 😄 

[FlorenceItaly]

4 minutes ago, VermeulT said:

can you use flightease for one way (and then points on my own) for the return?

I did this for my upcoming domestic flight so I imagine it is no problem for international.

[kazu]

4 minutes ago, FlorenceItaly said:

I did this for my upcoming domestic flight so I imagine it is no problem for international.

 

International is not an issue.  My return only flight ease bookings were International one way flights.

[Vineyard View]

Does HAL work with you if you want to book and pay for economy, then use miles to upgrade?  

[taba]

12 hours ago, Vineyard View said:

Does HAL work with you if you want to book and pay for economy, then use miles to upgrade?  

I booked using Flightease and was able to get the non-stop flights I wanted at less than I could have directly through Delta. At 45 before the depature date, I was ticketed. Prior to ticketing, I was unable to upgrade using miles. After ticketing I was was able to upgrade through my Delta account. 

[Vineyard View]

Thank you Taba. I recently found that if flights are not booked in the correct fare class, you can’t use miles to upgrade. I used another cruise lines air department. They said i should be able to upgrade to Business but once ticketed, the airline said no-go, just premium economy. 

So I guess the better question that I should have asked, is if the HAL department is able to book definitely in the class of service required if you inform them that you will upgrade using miles to Business, and if you can ask for early ticketing in order to do so? 

[taba]

2 hours ago, Vineyard View said:

Thank you Taba. I recently found that if flights are not booked in the correct fare class, you can’t use miles to upgrade. I used another cruise lines air department. They said i should be able to upgrade to Business but once ticketed, the airline said no-go, just premium economy. 

So I guess the better question that I should have asked, is if the HAL department is able to book definitely in the class of service required if you inform them that you will upgrade using miles to Business, and if you can ask for early ticketing in order to do so? 

The answer will vary by airline,  but I was surprised to discover that even though my Delta Airlines ticket was a heavily discounted "V" fare class, I was still able to upgrade once it was ticketed. I was also noticed that the ticket cost plus the upgrade fee ( if I paid in cash instead of miles) was much less than if I had originally booked the premium economy seats through Flightease. As an example, I paid $216/ ticket. An upgrade to premium economy is $99 for a total of $315. If I chose premium economy with flight ease, my cost would have been $477. There was a similar saving for first class.

[Vineyard View]

Thank you again Taba. I spent today researching, again, flights from SFO - VCE in May. Looked at multiple airlines then went onto Flightease. I found the pricing much lower (approx 50+%) than directly with the airlines. Crazy!  So glad I found this thread and many thanks to all of you. The statement that pricing can change until ticketed makes me nervous, but all of you are saying not to worry. 

I booked business RT. The departure is with United, which was far from the top of my list of choices but about $1,300 less than our preferred Airlines so we will give it a try - we have Lufthansa on return which we have heard good things about. 

I may try the mileage points approach separately and see where that leads, but at least we have seats booked. Woohoo! 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Vineyard View

[kazu]

6 minutes ago, Vineyard View said:

we have Lufthansa on return which we have heard good things about. 

 

I think you should be quite happy with Lufthansa’s business class 😉