Mostly flight questions

[tarhoosier]

Regarding cost of flight and comparison with cruise flight offers, I have a cruise In September from Stockholm. Oceania fare one way was 1700$, routing unknown. I booked Delta Comfort+ class for 1273$ in February of this year. I checked last week and the same fare/class/route is now 3200$. One data point. 

Part of the current environment for travel in all forms.

[osandomir]

13 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

Regarding cost of flight and comparison with cruise flight offers, I have a cruise In September from Stockholm. Oceania fare one way was 1700$, routing unknown. 

What fare class O was charging you $1700 one way to Stockholm? 

[mlmdaisy]

I was told by an Atlas agent that this particular cruise sailed at 9 PM to allow guests to fly in to Barbados that same day.  Then he told me that if I let them book our flight they may have us arrive the previous day.  

 

I guess we were lucky with Seattle.  There was only one nonstop flight from Tampa, and they booked it for us.  The return flights were as tight and convenient as possible.  What would have cost us $900 pp was $600 with them, and this is based on the fares we saw months before our dates.

 

It's easy enough for us to handle that flight and transfer.  My only remaining concern is being able to get on the ship before 3 PM if we arrive independently.  The two nonstop flights arrive at BGI early in the day.  I only wish that AA wasn't our only choice.  

[tarhoosier]

11 hours ago, osandomir said:

What fare class O was charging you $1700 one way to Stockholm? 

dunno. I did not ask or care. It was their stated air charge. My point, if one, was that early booking will often save money especially in this high travel demand period we are in.

[Huib]

23 hours ago, Redtravel said:

Booking your own flights gives you control.  Booking Oceania air gives you no control.  Imagine my situation.  About 8 hours before my scheduled flight, I got a text from airline that said my flight was canceled.  More information later. I called the airline and was told that they wouldn’t talk to me because the air was booked by Oceania.  I called Oceania 24/7 emergency number. I got a recorded message that said call back during regular business hours. I waited until 9 am and called again. The rep said that I should call the airline.  I told her what the airline said.  Her response was that they don’t do anything to help if your plane is less than 24 hours away.  I told her about the recording on the 24/7 emergency number. She laughed and said that she’s heard it before. Sorry, we cannot help.  Everyone is passing the buck. Meanwhile I got another text from airline that they had booked us on another flight.  Flight time was same. Plane was smaller than the original. We were among the lucky ones who got seats on the replacement plane.   We were flying to Europe arriving one day before embarkation.  We later met people who rerouted and had another cancellation. They caught up with the cruise on the 2nd day.  
After that experience, I will book my own air…or just stay home.

That is why you need a good Travel Agent.

Coming from our Caribbean cruise in Aruba we found out that Air Canada cancelled our flights and rebooked it for the following day on United. The following day we found out that Air Canada forgot to issue tickets for the United flight. We were stranded. 

Since Air Canada and Oceania could not be reached we contacted our TA. They were the whole day busy trying to resolve the issue. Even management of the TA contacted Management of Oceania to get us out.  We got home about four days late on a totally different flight. 

[osandomir]

5 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

dunno. I did not ask or care. It was their stated air charge. My point, if one, was that early booking will often save money especially in this high travel demand period we are in.

That’s interesting. Not that I suggest booking air through them but for our June 2025 cruise out of Oslo Oceania included air is $1400 total both ways. And it was even less for the European cruise this spring.

[mlmdaisy]

I'm confused by some of what I'm reading here.  Last year Oceania book flights with us on two airlines.  Once that happened, I dealt directly with each of them and had full control of my reservations.  

[clo]

21 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

Regarding cost of flight and comparison with cruise flight offers, I have a cruise In September from Stockholm. Oceania fare one way was 1700$, routing unknown. I booked Delta Comfort+ class for 1273$ in February of this year. I checked last week and the same fare/class/route is now 3200$. One data point. 

Part of the current environment for travel in all forms.

Sure glad that our three years of no travel and continuing to use our Chase Sapphire Reserve gave us RT J class to Amsterdam, return Stockholm. Whew.

 

[AveSaloon]

4 hours ago, Huib said:

Since Air Canada and Oceania could not be reached we contacted our TA.

 

Are you saying that no one answered the phone at AC?  I find that extremely difficult to believe, since their phone centers operate 24/7.

 

And why were you even bothering with going through your TA?  AC and UA were the people who would fix things.

[Huib]

5 minutes ago, AveSaloon said:

 

Are you saying that no one answered the phone at AC?  I find that extremely difficult to believe, since their phone centers operate 24/7.

 

And why were you even bothering with going through your TA?  AC and UA were the people who would fix things.

Believe me. When we phoned Air Canada, all we got was an automated message which said to go to the site. This was because there were many cancelled flights that day due  of a snow storm in Toronto. Our TA has a dedicated line to Air Canada and she was even on hold for 4.5 hours!. United couldn’t do anything. They saw the reservation but said that Air Canada needed to issue the tickets. We were just stuck at the airport.