Fights by Celebrity seats together

[canderson]

57 minutes ago, Bo1953 said:

... or self promotion???

 

bon voyage

One wonders.  I did gently ask for clarification in that regard.  I'll be watching...

[canderson]

Fascinating.  Just for grins, I sent a request email to the link that the previous poster provided.  By coincidence (not) I get an email back this morning from an outfit called above9.travel offering the same sort of service.  Will see what results from that.

 

[chucknmarilyn]

17 hours ago, canderson said:

Ugh.  I take back what I said.  No improvement with Celebrity's online site.  Will have to give them a call to see if they can improve on this.  $3430 (not $3319 as I recalled) with United, $3425 with Celebrity.  Identical flights.

 

 

 

Is the Celebrity one refundable and United's just changeable? I'm on my phone in bright sunlight so can't see details very well.

Edited December 2, 2021 by chucknmarilyn

[BennyBrun]

Once Celebrity ticket the flight then you have to pay $200.00 to cancel and follow the cancellation guideline they set up for the air part.  With variants running around highly recommend cancel for any reason insurance!!!  United is changeable but not a cash refund unless you click the fully refundable changeable fare and that fare price will jump substantially from the discounted rate.

[terrydtx]

2 minutes ago, BennyBrun said:

Once Celebrity ticket the flight then you have to pay $200.00 to cancel and follow the cancellation guideline they set up for the air part.  With variants running around highly recommend cancel for any reason insurance!!!  United is changeable but not a cash refund unless you click the fully refundable changeable fare and that fare price will jump substantially from the discounted rate.

If Celebrity cancels after final payment there is no $200 fee. I know this from our experience this year we got our flights cost refunded 100%

[C-Dragons]

1 hour ago, terrydtx said:

If Celebrity cancels after final payment there is no $200 fee. I know this from our experience this year we got our flights cost refunded 100%

Yes, we got full refunds too when X canceled.

[drowelf]

2 hours ago, BennyBrun said:

Once Celebrity ticket the flight then you have to pay $200.00 to cancel and follow the cancellation guideline they set up for the air part.  With variants running around highly recommend cancel for any reason insurance!!!  United is changeable but not a cash refund unless you click the fully refundable changeable fare and that fare price will jump substantially from the discounted rate.

$200 penalty for cancellation is not too bad when you consider that the tickets are $3000+ that you are looking at. Over the years I've found that the various lines air fares can generally beat the airlines by 50% or more for international travel. I've not seen as good of deals for domestic travel, but have not compared them as much, as we generally use our various airline/CC points for domestic travel. 

 

Of course penalty only kicks in if you cancel, if its the cruise line, then no penalty. 

[BennyBrun]

Cruise lines air fare for international travel is amazing you just have to read the fine print understand that it is different than buying from the airline directly and that I would always buy insurance to cover myself when buying it from the cruise line directly.  I like to buy from the airline directly but I do my research and watch fares and usually buy the ticket 90-120 days out and it is usually comes out to about the same as what the cruise line is offering or lower plus the airline has the ability to help you more when you run into trouble since they control the ticket but that’s me and YMMV.  I just got a great deal for Premium Select to Tokyo in March for NCL cruise ( keeping my fingers crossed that will still go) directly from the airline.

[CruiserFromSC]

I just purchased flights today to Barcelona for next Sep/Oct and paid $1940 pp business class on Lufthansa and BA.  The Celebrity Flights rep booked our seats for all flights, no charge. 

[terrydtx]

I hope by 2023 CA will have some good deals for flying to Sydney for our two cruises in Australia in March 2024. If we were going next March business class is running $8000 to $12000 and main cabin is over $3000 booking with airlines like United and Quantas from San Antonio.

[canderson]

3 hours ago, CruiserFromSC said:

I just purchased flights today to Barcelona for next Sep/Oct and paid $1940 pp business class on Lufthansa and BA.  The Celebrity Flights rep booked our seats for all flights, no charge. 

Starting from what city?

[CruiserFromSC]

36 minutes ago, canderson said:

Starting from what city?

Newark. 

[canderson]

31 minutes ago, CruiserFromSC said:

Newark. 

Distinct price advantage from the E coast.

[cruisestitch]

What kind of fights?  Fisticuffs?  Water balloons at fifty paces?  🤪😁😁😁

[TxThunder]

We got a very good business class fare for our July 11 sailing from Rome to Barcelona, outbound on UA & LH through Munich, and return on BA and AA (but BA metal). Was about $2,300pp. 

[terrydtx]

On 12/2/2021 at 5:50 PM, CruiserFromSC said:

I just purchased flights today to Barcelona for next Sep/Oct and paid $1940 pp business class on Lufthansa and BA.  The Celebrity Flights rep booked our seats for all flights, no charge. 

Just a suggestion from personal experience. You should go to the BA website and make sure your seats requested by the CA rep are actually there. CA requests seats but not all airlines accept the requests. When we booked our flights to Barcelona the CA rep told us that seat requests may not be accepted by the airline and that we should follow up with each airline booked. We had an excellent $2200pp RT business class fare.  We had a BA flight from Dallas to Heathrow and then to Barcelona. Our return flights were on Delta.  The CA rep was correct when I checked the BA website our business class seats were not accepted, and BA required a $150pp fee to prebook seats. When the cruise was canceled by Celebrity in May along with our air, BA refused to refund our $300. This why I refuse to ever fly with BA. All our seat requests on the return Delta flights were accepted by Delta.

[Andrewgary]

The old bait and switch. I was expecting a thread about donnybrooks and all I get is airplanes.

[CruiserFromSC]

On 12/8/2021 at 8:15 AM, terrydtx said:

Just a suggestion from personal experience. You should go to the BA website and make sure your seats requested by the CA rep are actually there. CA requests seats but not all airlines accept the requests. When we booked our flights to Barcelona the CA rep told us that seat requests may not be accepted by the airline and that we should follow up with each airline booked. We had an excellent $2200pp RT business class fare.  We had a BA flight from Dallas to Heathrow and then to Barcelona. Our return flights were on Delta.  The CA rep was correct when I checked the BA website our business class seats were not accepted, and BA required a $150pp fee to prebook seats. When the cruise was canceled by Celebrity in May along with our air, BA refused to refund our $300. This why I refuse to ever fly with BA. All our seat requests on the return Delta flights were accepted by Delta.

Thank you for the suggestion.  I did check with BA and our seats are there. We actually just got a flight modification notice and they were listed there as well, but thanks for the tip.  I will continue to monitor to ensure they don’t fall off at a later date.  

[81Zoomie]

On 12/2/2021 at 12:44 AM, CyberTag said:

How did you get seats on your BA flight?  We just booked through Celebrity for a June cruise, but was told seat assignments aren’t available until 24 hours before departure.  Did you do economy?  We are flying from SFO.  

We booked direct with American for an open jaws European cruise next summer.  The outbound is a BA codeshare.  We decided it was worth a couple hundred $$ extra to get to Heathrow nonstop.  There was no mention of any seat selection fees when selecting our flights.  We googled it and found a way to put reservation # in the BA site to reserve seats.  We were a bit taken back to have to pay $109 pp to reserve seats in premium economy, 95% of which were available.  If we didn’t pay we would not have been able to select our seats until checkin. Prices were high enough as it was, the added fee was frustrating.

[ExArkie]

On 12/2/2021 at 11:05 PM, canderson said:

Distinct price advantage from the E coast.

Sorry about coming into this discussion late - I have been taking time off from electronics for the past couple of weeks, but a suggestion that worked for me at various times (in addition to varying dates and airports, as previously suggested).

 

If you are tied to a specific carrier (e.g., United), check other airlines in the alliance. For example, I just checked on Google Flights and a one-way DEN-BCN is around US$2,100 for many dates in October, flying on TAP Portugal, which is a Star Alliance member.

 

What most often works for me is flying from a different airport and buying two tickets. Rather than trying to book from my home airport, CLT-MEL, a couple of years ago, I found prices enough lower for YVR-MEL that I could purchase an additional ticket for CLT-YVR and still save significant money. (Plus, a couple of days’ worth of Marriott points for a little time in Vancouver.) If EWR-BCN is a couple of thousand dollars less, you could buy a ticket to Newark and spend the night at an airport hotel for the difference.

[canderson]

@ExArkie

Yes on alliance checking.

We've even seen some large differences switching airlines on the same flight.  Wouldn't think booking with primary carrier vs. code share should ever produce a different fare, but it sometimes does.  Strange stuff.

 

We don't often see a better deal when breaking the trip into two separate legs, though, but we do check.  

 

 

[ExArkie]

On 12/20/2021 at 9:14 AM, canderson said:

@ExArkie

Yes on alliance checking.

We've even seen some large differences switching airlines on the same flight.  Wouldn't think booking with primary carrier vs. code share should ever produce a different fare, but it sometimes does.  Strange stuff.

 

We don't often see a better deal when breaking the trip into two separate legs, though, but we do check.  

 

 

Good point. I’ve booked a Delta flight through Air France and got the same flights, same seats for several hundred dollars less than buying through Delta.

 

I failed to explain (sorry) that booking separate legs has brought savings usually when booking business class for the over-ocean part and coach for the domestic part. In my previous example, CLT-MEL would have been in first for the domestic leg and business for the transpacific, since the airline wasn’t willing to sell different cabins on the same ticket. Breaking it into two tickets with coach domestic (which I was able to upgrade with miles) and business transpacific saved several thousand dollars.
 

Often, in flying to Europe, we book coach to JFK - about an hour and a half on the flight - and a separate business seat to Europe. However, I have seen several times that booking a ticket in first to JFK and a separate business ticket to Europe is a few hundred dollars cheaper than buying one ticket for the entire route, but that usually involves two different carriers for the two legs.