A Cunard Air question (for those in the States)

[frankp01]

I was just told by our travel agent that, in the states, Cunard will only offer a Cunard Air flight prior to the cruise/crossing, not after.  That means we can fly to the start of a trans-Atlantic crossing and sail home, but not cross and then fly home.  That seems very arbitrary, so I'm looking for some additional insight here. Thoughts? Thanks.

Edited April 13, 2021 by frankp01

[safarigal]

That is not accurate. Cunard Air is available before and after voyages. You also do not need to fly on the day of your embarkation/disembarkation, you can book it for flights a couple of days before or after your trip.

[frankp01]

> Cunard Air is available before and after voyages.

 

Thanks, that's what I suspected. We're sailing round-trip, but have a friend coming along who is sailing only one way. He has an air ticket using miles/points, but (as usual for a one-way flight) the miles he's using is extortionate. I've read so many posts here that say one can get a Cunard airfare for almost exactly what he's paying now, without needing to use his mileage. He's convinced he won't get a better deal through Cunard. I'm not. Since he's dug into his position, I took it on myself to call and get him a quote.  So believe me how crestfallen I was when told he didn't qualify for Cunard air!

 

Now, how do I tactfully convince the travel agent that they're wrong? We could try and book it directly with Cunard. But since the cruise portion is through an agency I'm sure they'll just refer us back to the ticketing agency.

[caroltovt]

Talk to Cunard and find out when the flight can be reserved. Call at that time. There is a certain window when it starts. 

 

[frankp01]

Thanks.

 

As an aside (with something that could be worthy of it's own thread), I submitted a question to Cunard re: Cunard Air using the inquiry form on the website. One of the required questions was 'Embarkation Date'.  It would not accept any dates prior to 1 January 2022. !!

[safarigal]

5 minutes ago, frankp01 said:

Thanks.

 

As an aside (with something that could be worthy of it's own thread), I submitted a question to Cunard re: Cunard Air using the inquiry form on the website. One of the required questions was 'Embarkation Date'.  It would not accept any dates prior to 1 January 2022. !!

Hmmmmm - they are meant to accept bookings 320 to 4 days prior to sailing. Is your booking within that time frame?

 

I hope the January 1st date doesn't mean there won't be any sailings until then!

[frankp01]

1 hour ago, safarigal said:

Hmmmmm - they are meant to accept bookings 320 to 4 days prior to sailing. Is your booking within that time frame?

 

The date was 15 December, 2021 Let's see, that's just about exactly 8 months = 240 days.  It *DID* accept 1 January, 2022, however.

 

1 hour ago, safarigal said:

I hope the January 1st date doesn't mean there won't be any sailings until then!

 

That was exactly my fear. It's either that or it's a programming bug.  I'm hoping it's the latter.  I was on the US site, but perhaps I had a question on one of the UK sailings in the next few months.

[safarigal]

I made a dummy booking for December 2021 on the Cunard travel agent's site, and was able to book air, so your travel agent should be able to do so too - maybe the glitch in the system has been resolved!

[bluemarble]

@safarigal, he can confirm the details, but I believe @frankp01 is referring to the "Embarkation date" fields on the form for submitting an inquiry to Cunard on their "Contact us" page on the Cunard US website.

 

I've done some experimenting myself with that form, leaving the "How can we help?" field blank so that the form will not submit. What I've found is that it seems to think any day greater than "12" is an error. I suspect the code behind that form is erroneously editing the day field "DD" as if it were the field for the month.

 

That would explain why it thinks @frankp01's embarkation date of December 15, 2021 is invalid, but will accept January 1, 2022 instead.  I don't think this is an issue with the year 2021 versus 2022. Rather, it appears to be a bug in the editing of the day field on that form.

 

That's what I'm seeing anyway.

Edited April 15, 2021 by bluemarble

[frankp01]

31 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

What I've found is that it seems to think any day greater than "12" is an error. 

 

I think you have it. At the time I suspected that it may have had to do with the variance between a MM//DD/YYYY formatted date and a DD/MM/YYYY date.  I didn't think it could have been that, though, because the form was so clear as to how to enter the date.  Clearly it didn't rearrange and reformat the input for a non-American date validation test. 

 

P.S. I was so on a mission trying to get an answer to my question that I didn't want to spend any time testing date variations (other than the two I tried).

[Dietemann]

Try using the UK reading of the date - 15 December (15/12) rather than US December 15 (12/15)

[safarigal]

45 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

@safarigal, he can confirm the details, but I believe @frankp01 is referring to the "Embarkation date" fields on the form for submitting an inquiry to Cunard on their "Contact us" page on the Cunard US website.

 

I've done some experimenting myself with that form, leaving the "How can we help?" field blank so that the form will not submit. What I've found is that it seems to think any day greater than "12" is an error. I suspect the code behind that form is erroneously editing the day field "DD" as if it were the field for the month.

 

That would explain why it thinks @frankp01's embarkation date of December 15, 2021 is invalid, but will accept January 1, 2022 instead.  I don't think this is an issue with the year 2021 versus 2022. Rather, it appears to be a bug in the editing of the day field on that form.

 

That's what I'm seeing anyway.

That does make sense 🙂

[frankp01]

9 minutes ago, Dietemann said:

Try using the UK reading of the date - 15 December (15/12) rather than US December 15 (12/15)

 

You can't. You're forced to select the month from a drop-down, then enter the day free-form. Rearranging the input has to happen behind the scenes, which is clearly not happening.

[bluemarble]

On the Cunard US website the "Embarkation date" fields on the "Email Cunard" form are listed in the usual US date order of "Month", "DD" and "YYYY". As @frankp01 has just mentioned, the "Month" field is a drop-down list where you select a value from "January" through "December". Then you can only enter a value between 1 and 12 for the "DD" field.

 

Now I just popped on over to the Cunard UK website where the "Embarkation date" fields are in the usual UK order of "DD", "Month" and "YYYY". I was fully expecting the "DD" field to work correctly on the UK website. But guess what, the "DD" field on the UK website also only accepts values between 1 and 12.

 

So it's not a matter of something getting messed up with the different order of the date fields between the US and UK websites. Both sites appear to have the same issue with the edits on the "DD" field. I wonder how long that's been this way?

 

Of course this is only a form to submit an email inquiry/enquiry to Cunard. There are other fields on the form to enter the Booking number, Voyage number and Ship. So I don't suppose it's all that important to enter the precise Embarkation date. The Embarkation date is labeled as optional on the UK website but not on the US website. However, it does appear to be optional on both sites. That make sense since not all questions submitted on this form will be related to a specific voyage,  But this is a potential source of confusion as customers try to figure out why the form won't accept their embarkation date with a day of the month greater than 12.

[njpln]

We use a travel agent, but for flights I always call Cunard directly.  Their prices are great, and they will look at as many airlines as you ask.

 

We have even booked flights before and after back to backs.  In that case they book one direction with each cruise. 
 

Once we book the flights, I just call the travel agent and ask them to get the update from Cunard.
 

 

[frankp01]

That's very interesting, in two ways. It's nice to have additional confirmation that we could fly in either direction, before or after the cruise.  But also that  Cunard will let you book the air with them, even though you booked the cruise through an agent. That's exactly what I need, because the agent can get offended when offered 'alternative facts' to statements he's made. This way it'll just be presented as a fait accompli.

[frankp01]

On 4/13/2021 at 4:06 PM, safarigal said:

That is not accurate. Cunard Air is available before and after voyages.

An update.  I finally got around to calling Cunard.  For the crossing in question, Southampton to NY, a return air ticket to London is not available after the cruise. What I did not specifically ask, but should have, was could I sail NY to Southampton and fly home.  My impression was the answer was 'no' to that as well.  I still regret that, when I sailed on the QE2, I did not take advantage of flying home, westbound, on the Concord!  It sounds like I couldn't do that now, whether super- or sub-sonic. I was told that if I was doing a cruise that was round-trip from Southampton, I could get air over and back.

[safarigal]

1 hour ago, frankp01 said:

An update.  I finally got around to calling Cunard.  For the crossing in question, Southampton to NY, a return air ticket to London is not available after the cruise. What I did not specifically ask, but should have, was could I sail NY to Southampton and fly home.  My impression was the answer was 'no' to that as well.  I still regret that, when I sailed on the QE2, I did not take advantage of flying home, westbound, on the Concord!  It sounds like I couldn't do that now, whether super- or sub-sonic. I was told that if I was doing a cruise that was round-trip from Southampton, I could get air over and back.

I think I see the problem 🙂

 

For westbound crossings booked in the US you can only get flights from your home town in the US to London on your way to catch the ship, and then from New York to your home town in the US at the end of the crossing.

 

For eastbound crossings you can fly from your home in the US to New York to catch the ship, and then you can fly back to your home town in the US from London at the end of the crossing.

 

So unfortunately if you book through Cunard US or use a US based travel agent, you cannot use Cunard Completeair to fly to the UK again at the end of a westbound crossing, but you can use it to fly from the US to the UK to join an eastbound crossing. 

[frankp01]

23 hours ago, safarigal said:

For eastbound crossings you can fly from your home in the US to New York to catch the ship, and then you can fly back to your home town in the US from London at the end of the crossing.

 

OK, so to beat this dead horse just a little more. If I understand you correctly, I could sail eastbound and fly back to the states from London, but only if I also fly to New York to connect to the sailing at the start? I wouldn't need the flight to New York, so I guess it's a good thing I prefer to sail westbound, so I could fly to London beforehand. That is, if I decided not to sail return. 

 

 

[safarigal]

1 hour ago, frankp01 said:

 

OK, so to beat this dead horse just a little more. If I understand you correctly, I could sail eastbound and fly back to the states from London, but only if I also fly to New York to connect to the sailing at the start? I wouldn't need the flight to New York, so I guess it's a good thing I prefer to sail westbound, so I could fly to London beforehand. That is, if I decided not to sail return. 

 

 

Sorry I'm being obscure! For an eastbound crossing, say you lived in Los Angeles, but were already in New York so you didn't need a flight to the ship. Then you could fly back to Los Angeles from London at the end of the crossing. If you wanted to fly back to New York instead you can also do that. The only thing you can't do with Cunard Completeair  if you are booking through Cunard US and not Cunard UK is fly back to London at the end of a Westbound crossing or fly from Southampton to New York to join an Eastbound crossing.

 

So to answer your question, you CAN sail eastbound and fly back to the states from London using Cunard Completeair even if you did not fly to New York to connect to the sailing at the start 🙂

[frankp01]

OK, thanks for the second clarification.  Our agent is off the hook, this time (at least as far as flying back to London is concerned)  But he made a blanket statement that a flight couldn't be after a crossing, only before. I specifically asked: "I couldn't sail to Southampton and fly back from London?", to which he replied 'No'.  And that was the part I found suspect.  And which you've confirmed may not be correct.  

[rsquare]

On 4/19/2021 at 8:22 PM, safarigal said:

For westbound crossings booked in the US you can only get flights from your home town in the US to London on your way to catch the ship, and then from New York to your home town in the US at the end of the crossing.

Stated this way, it may be a bit misleading.  While I normally fly EWR-LHR for a westbound TA (although in fact I live closer to PHL), I have also used Cunard Air to fly to Paris, to Nice (which involved a connection at CDG) and once to Brussels; all of these trips involved returning to London on Eurostar which is quite reasonable if booked far enough in advance.

 

Also be aware that there can be some choice of carrier; for EWR-LHR I typically request, and get, Virgin Atlantic rather than BA.