Won't Be Taking My Atlas Cruise After All

[Trev-and-Ange]

I booked what would have been my first Atlas cruise for Iceland and Greenland. Alas, there will be no Atlas for us.

 

Due to airport closures from Ernesto my Delta flight to JFK yesterday (Sunday) was cancelled, but of course they didn't outright cancel it until 8pm or so. As a result I will miss my flight to KEF which leaves today at 1pm. And, Delta can't get me to JFK until Wednesday but the ship leaves on Wednesday. We are fortunate to fly business class and had booked business class flights, but at this late date, many of the alternative routes which could theoretically get us to KEF in time for departure are economy, not even premium economy and they have too short or too long layovers or convoluted itineraries.

 

My husband and I are in our 60s and because we both have physical maladies, we have to pace ourselves. We intentionally booked a flight to JFK on Sunday with overnight stay and the flight to KEF the following day. We can no longer handle multiple legs over multiple time zones in a single trip.  

Right now our only option is to fly Tuesday to a US city connecting to a an overnight flight arriving in KEF at 6:30am but then have to wait until 3pm to embark. 

 

We have already lost $$ on hotel in KEF, airport pickup in KEF, our flight to KEF, which we could not make, and $250 in transportation getting to the airport yesterday only to have to return home almost 12 hours later. No one in their right mind books an expensive cruise without intending to take it. We carefully planned it so that we could do this voyage, incurring additional expenses of pacing our journey to get to KEF with overnight hotel stays.

 

Even a credit toward another cruise in the future would have been a gracious and most appreciated gesture, but no luck. We are disappointed obviously. Atlas will keep our money but they won't get any of our money in the future. 

 

[Sherry7641]

I am so very sorry to hear that you will miss your cruise. We just got off the World Traveler in Venice on August 14th. You would have loved the ship and the crew.  Atlas does an amazing job of training their crew. I’m sorry that Atlas couldn’t help you with some type of reimbursement. Hopefully you can get some reimbursement through the airline.

[ridethetide]

Didn't you have trip insurance?

[Trev-and-Ange]

Overall if you can technically make the ship, you are expected to do whatever it takes no matter how inconvenient. I am not able to travel like this any more.

 

Delta is refunding my ticket but the KEF flight change would be at least another $1k, and requires me to rebook prior to my flight today so I'd have to figure out an alternate itinerary in the next hour. I have spent all morning on the phone trying to figure out what to do. Obviously JFK is out so I have to find an alternative departure city and figure out how to get there, etc. There is just so little time to do that and it is extremely stressful.

 

After taking weeks to plan this can't redo all if it in a matter of hours.

 

[donaldsc]

Two Points

 

1. Didn't you have insurance?

 

2. This is where a good TA would have been helpful.  We had an instance where we had a long ground hold in Las Vegas that might have caused us to miss a 2nd flight out of Atlanta to Athens.  We called our TA while we were sitting the the ground in Vegas and she had an alternative flight already held for us out of Atlanta by the time we got to Atlanta.  She also called us as we were landing in Atlanta to tell us what our options were.  Turned out that we did make our Atlanta connection but our TA quickly handled a problem that we would not have been able to do.  Getting a bunch of perks from a TA is good.  Having a TA who gets you out of jams - priceless.

 

I will agree w you that it would have been nice for Atlas to  give you a credit for a future cruise.  However lets face it - it wasn't their fault that you missed your connections 

 

DON

[Iawz331]

Consider a different airline.  Saga Class on Iceland air is very nice.

[skiingj]

Sorry to hear.  Best of luck.