Upgrading flights booked by Viking

[reeves35]

It's interesting to see how Viking behaves in US.  It is quite different here in Australia which may be because Viking is far from the largest seller of river cruises in this part of world where Scenic (including Emerald) and APT (including Travelmarvel) dominate.

 

Here, you would expect free airfares to Europe to be included in most river cruises over 10 days and usually there is also an option to upgrade to Premium Economy or Business Class particularly as, from Australia, the flight time to Europe is over 24 hours.

 

I am booked on a Travelmarvel 14 night European Gems (same as Grand European) in August where the base fare in a balcony cabin including economy flights on Singapore Airlines, Qatar or Emirates was about USD6900.  Travelmarvel offered the option to upgrade to Premium Economy for about USD1150 or Business Class for USD3400.   I have taken the Business Class option on Singapore Airlines for an all up holiday cost of around USD10300 which is great value when you consider that just a Business Class fare to Europe from Australia in August is around USD7500.

 

[GoGAdawgsWin]

9 hours ago, reeves35 said:

.   I have taken the Business Class option on Singapore Airlines for an all up holiday cost of around USD10300 which is great value when you consider that just a Business Class fare to Europe from Australia in August is around USD7500.

 

Is the $10300 per person or couple?  I agree economy would not be comfortable coming /going to Australia.  Is that a non-stop?

Have a great trip!

[reeves35]

9 hours ago, GoGAdawgsWin said:

Is the $10300 per person or couple?  I agree economy would not be comfortable coming /going to Australia.  Is that a non-stop?

Have a great trip!

It is USD10300 per person including 14 day cruise and Business Class flights. We've been saving for a few years for this trip. It was originally supposed to be in 2021 but delayed due to COVID.  I am spending a week in UK before joining cruise in Amsterdam so am flying into London and home from Budapest via Frankfurt.

 

There are no non-stop flights from eastern Australia (Sydney, Melbourne) to Europe.  My flight goes via Singapore so it is an 8 hour flight from Melbourne to Singapore and then 13 hours from Singapore to London. 

 

Currently, the only nonstop to Europe from Australia is from Perth (west coast of Australia) to London on Qantas which a 17.5 hour flight.  Qantas is buying some long range Airbus A350s and hopes to start nonstop flights from Melbourne and Sydney to London (and New York) in about 2025.  These flights will be about 20.5 hours nonstop.  This is dubbed Project Sunrise as on eastbound flights you would see the sun rise twice on the same flight.

[GoGAdawgsWin]

Thanks for the info.  It is interesting to see how things are in different places.

have a great trip

[bundtkate]

1 hour ago, reeves35 said:

It is USD10300 per person including 14 day cruise and Business Class flights.

Honest, I think that may be close to on-par with what we're seeing. Cruise was ~$7000 total for 12 days, including economy flights. We added on 2 days in Paris on our own ($150/night) and I've seen business upgrades through Viking for ~$6,000 per person which would bring the total cost up to $9,650 per person all in. For the 8-9 hour flight from Texas to Europe, that's not worth the extra scratch and I'd as soon keep the short legs in economy, but I would def be singing a different tune with two different 8+ hour flights for sure! Hope your cruise is one to remember. 😄

[bundtkate]

Since our flights were recently ticketed and I was able to talk to Lufthansa today, I thought I'd pop by and revisit this thread with my findings. Turns out my flights are upgradeable (yay!) but there is currently no award space available (boo!). The gal from Miles and More said that can change closer to departure so I'm going to try calling back a few times before we leave and see if anything opens up.

We were booked into V fare class and I was only asking to upgrade our long haul from DC to Frankfurt. For that, the upgrade cost is 30k points per person for premium economy and 50k points per person for business. I'm hopeful we'll manage, but if not I found us seats near the back of the plane that are in sets of 2 instead of 3 and have some extra legroom so at least we won't be cuddled up to a stranger for 8 hours.