Can My Folks make a 11:00 flight at Long Beach Airport?

[Deborito]

My folks are going on the May 12th 4 night Monarch cruise coming back on Friday May 16. Can they make a 11:00 flight at Long Beach Airport? They plan to walk off with their luggage. Debbie

[Cruisin' Ron VA]

Nobody here can answer that question for sure.

 

Under perfect perfect perfect conditions yes.

 

Some factors to think about are:

 

1. Will the ship make it back on time?

 

2. Will the Jones family from France show up at the pursers desk after being paged 500 times?

 

3. Will customs clear the ship in a timely manner?

 

4. Will the airport check in lines be long?

 

5. Will the airport security lines be long?

 

If your parents are confident about making the flight then they should also have a back up plan.

 

I would say just book a later flight and lounge around the ship the last morning and let everyone else pull their hair out and end up being stressed on their mini vacation.

[BDOMINGER]

Hi,

 

We live in Long Beach and cruise on the Monarch/Vision often. If they are taking their luggage off (express departure), there should be no problem. Even if the ship doesn't start debarking until 7:30 or 8 am it should take no more than 25 minutes to get to Long Beach airport.

[gdpups]

Long Beach is a VERY small airport and not far from San Pedro so shouldn't have a problem if all goes well, but do take into account all that was mentioned in the above post. Dee

[louanne93]

We have never had a problem out of Long Beach and always schedule an early flight. In Jan. we had an 11:00 flight out of LAX and we made it fine.

[critterchick]

The only time we've experienced delays in disembarking Monarch (16 cruises now) is when there's been a full crew immigration inspection, which they do about every 90 days. Fortunately for your parents, they just had one on April 21. We didn't begin the guest disembarkation process until 7:30 and it took us two hours to get off the ship and through immigration. But since it was so recent, I don't think there's much of a chance of that happening again in May.

 

Long Beach only has about 45 flights daily, and it's never taken me more than 15 minutes to get through security there, so I wouldn't worry about that part of it. Traffic is always a question, but if your folks are off the ship no later than 7:30 they should be fine. Heck, if they can pack everything into airline-compliant carryons they would have it made in the shade!

 

We've heard Guest Services paging passengers as we disembark, so they don't hold up the process for the few idiots who haven't settled their Seapass accounts. Heck, they don't even hold it up for drug busts - we've watched them taking people off in handcuffs during general disembarkation. They get to cut in line, though.:rolleyes:

[DEBCAT65]

We had a 10:50 flight out of LAX on our 3-28 Monarch cruise and we made it in plenty of time, with time to spare. We did carry off our own luggage and it was all carry on's on the plane, though. Just warn them, the lines to carry off your own luggage were very, very long, but they moved quickly.

 

Debbi

[Deborito]

Thanks everybody for the info. If Debcat can make it clear to LAX which is a lot farther away. I'm sure my folks will have no problem making their flight at 11:00 at Long Beach. I'll send them this thread. Debbie

[Deborito]

Someone at the West Coast Departures link said that as long as they are in a taxi or shuttle by 9:00 they should make it fine. Debbie

[emilygrace]

I didn't disembark the Monarch until around 9:30, went outside and hooked up with a shuttle going to LGB and was there in no time. At LGB I walked right up to the Jet Blue counter and checked in. Security took all of 5 minutes. It's very doable.