Viking Homeland - UK customers

[NeilP57]

I am looking at booking a Viking Homeland cruise for August 2021. I am interested in which air routing Viking use for travelling out to Stockholm and back from Bergen.  London Gatwick appears to be the only UK airport that has flights out to Stockholm and back from Bergen. London Gatwick is not the easiest airport to get to for those of us who live north of London, so I was wondering if they make all their passengers travel to Gatwick or are they happy providing non direct flights from say Birmingham.

 

I am not sure what I would prefer, a change of flights somewhere in Europe or a direct flight to/from London Gatwick, but if would be good to understand the options.

 

Any insight on how they handle flights for UK passengers on this long standing cruise itinerary would be appreciated.

[old biddy]

We did Homelands in 2017. We flew home from Stockholm to Heathrow. Going out we flew to Oslo and did the extension taking the train to Bergen, a brilliant journey. So sorry, can't help with direct flight to Bergen, but on our various Viking trips we have never used Gatwick. We had BA flights. Hope that helps - or not!

[arlowood]

We've done several river cruises and 1 Ocean cruise with Viking - all with start and finish points within Europe. We live in the East Midlands and specifically requested that our flights originated and finished in Birmingham. We just did not want the hassle of getting to and from any of the London area airports (Heathrow, Gatwick etc)

 

Viking always claim that they use scheduled carriers so they will not book you on eg Easyjet, Ryanair, Jet2 etc. Our Birmingham based flights have almost exclusively been with Lufthansa using either Munich or Frankfurt as a hub to change over for any onward flight. I think we did use KLM via Amsterdam on one occasion.

 

These days with so many airlines being in group alliances then there will be no problem getting an efficient routing from Birmingham to Stockholm and back from Bergen. Have a look on the Tripadvisor flight planning tool for flight options from Birmingham to Stockholm and see what is on offer.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/CheapFlightsHome

 

In all our years of cruising with Viking we have never had a problem going from Birmingham

[Nippy Sweetie]

We went from Edinburgh to Stockholm via Amsterdam then Bergen to Heathrow and then home. Viking were very helpful. No extra charge for the regional flights. Contact them to discuss possibilities. 

[kcpvwill]

We have flown from Manchester to Bergen via Copenhagen with SAS and another time with KLM via Amsterdam.  Viking will discuss options with you.  

[PSJHT]

We are doing the Homelands cruise this August but from Bergn to Stockholm but as we live in the North East we wanted to fly from Newcastle Airport which has no direct flights to either Bergen or Stockholm.

We checked on the internet what scheduled flights would get us to and from the cities, ONCE the schedules had been released from the relevant airlines. The schedules are normally available 9 to 12 months ahead. 

In our case this would be either Air France or KLM with transfers at either Paris or Amsterdam respectively. 

With the exact data in hand (i.e. Date, Flight times and Flight numbers) we contacted Viking and requested that they book these.

A few weeks later we got a message back from Viking letting us know which flights were booked.   They were the same as we requested and the information was visible on MyViking Journey for our booking.

About 2 weeks later Viking informed us that the airline had rescheduled one of the flight legs and they told us the alternative flight times  and  asked us to confirm which flight option we wanted to take. We  chose the best option and Viking booked that for us.

Also note that we wanted to fly a day earlier than the boarding day of our cruise and stay in a Bergen hotel overnight, at our expense, we also need to sort our travel from Bergen airport to Bergen city ( a simple train ride ) .    Viking accommodated all of that without any problems.   

Simply let Viking know what you want to do, when you have the flight details and they will sort it. 

Have a great trip.

 

[NeilP57]

Thank you for your very helpful comments. I think I will have to go with indirect flights from Birmingham. 
 

The advice to do my own research once flights are released and make contact with Viking either direct or via my TA is a good one. 

[Jammy Bun]

We did Homelands a couple of years ago, from Manchester.  I think it was KLM, and via Oslo in one direction and Amsterdam in the other.

Our first Viking cruise was a river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel.  We were supposed to fly home to Manchester via Amsterdam, but instead decided to book direct EasyJet flights ourselves (we have family in Switzerland, and regularly use EasyJet with no problems at all).