airline information missing from cruise documents

[cruisegirl]

Our cruise documents arrived today for our 8/25 Alaskan cruise on the Statendam. I would be jumping up and down for joy but noticed a strange thing. My airline itinerary lists flights to Vancouver and the flights back home from Fairbanks. My husband's itinerary ONLY lists the flights from Fairbanks. Needless to say I'll be on the phone bright and early tomorrow morning with the travel agent! Wonder how they think he is getting to Vancouver. This is the kind of stuff that drives you nuts! Sure glad I looked the documents over carefully.

[thomasale]

keep us posted

[Starbright]

Our cruise finishes in Ft Lauderdale and the invoice from Holland America showed us flying back from Vancouver (where the cruise begins)! This would be a pretty long coach trip to the airport!!

Glad to say they amended it after I called our TA.

[cruisegirl]

Am checking with the travel agent this morning as mainly want them to know that someone goofed. I finally called the airlines about 11:30 p.m. last night as I knew I was booked on American. I knew I wouldn't sleep otherwise. Sure enough, hubby has a reservation on AA too, in fact even has a seat assignment. Strange stuff though and shows carelessness on someone's part.

[Roz]

HAL clearly goofed, but every TA I've used has checked the docs before they gave them to me. You may want to point this out to your TA. They should have verified the info and had it corrected. You shouldn't have to be making phone calls.

Roz

[wander]

I agree with Roz.

[jhannah]

I agree as well. That's the TA's responsibility.

[MercedMike]

HAL clearly goofed, but every TA I've used has checked the docs before they gave them to me. You may want to point this out to your TA. They should have verified the info and had it corrected. You shouldn't have to be making phone calls. Roz

Roz is right on! My DW the TA spends as much as two hours checking documents BEFORE she delivers them to clients. This is really a minor glitch, easily corrected, but you should let your TA know you are not happy that they did not catch it and correct it!

[twinkletoes4445]

For our first cruise, we had Carnival do all the airline bookings. When I picked up our cruise and airline info from the TA, I noticed that the airline info was wrong. It had the right flight numbers, but the wrong departure cities (for our return flights). The TA called Carnival and Carnival said it was correct info.

I knew it was wrong because a little bit before the cruise, our TA told us the flight info and I'd been in contact with the airlines to make sure our 6 seats were somewhat close together and during this time, I found out that we'd been moved to different flights and even a different airline.

Anyway, the tickets showed us leaving out of Miami and flying through Charlotte, but in reality, we were really flying out of FLL and going through Detroit. But the flight numbers on the tickets were correct. So I called the airlines and found out that I was right. I can't even imagine what a mess it would have been to be in Miami trying to catch a flight, when we should have been in FLL.

The airline blamed Carnival and Carnival blamed the airlines. I have no clue who's fault it was...but we did get new tickets the next day, so all was fine.

But I was not happy with the TA. She should have checked further into this when I told her there was a problem.

I know now to check this. I would have never thought something like this could have happened...but it did.

[Atomica]

This is exactly why I book my flights myself. Even if the cruiseline had a better deal, I still think I'd handle them personally - I'd go nuts worrying about whether they were correct (or if they put me a red-eye).

[twinkletoes4445]

This is exactly why I book my flights myself. Even if the cruiseline had a better deal, I still think I'd handle them personally - I'd go nuts worrying about whether they were correct (or if they put me a red-eye).

Yep, and that's why we booked our own this time. The first time, I was not sure what we were doing...so I thought I'd let them handle it. We paid the deviation fee, and ended up having no say in anything. They had us on a 5:45 am flight! We didn't need to be on a flight that early since we were going in 2 days early. We won't do that again. Besides, we always buy insurance, and we fly in at least two days prior to our cruise.

Oh yeah...and since we flew on two different airlines (originally we were on one, but somewhere along the line, Carnival switched us to a different carrier for our return flight), we were tagged as being suspicious and we're hauled aside for a complete baggage search once we arrived in FLL. It was a few years ago, and we just happened to be flying on a day that they were implementing new travel guidelines...and a one-way ticket was suspicious (they didn't care that we had flown down on another airline). There were six of us and it took some time. But after that, I started booking my own. At least I knew we'd be on the same airline coming and going on our trips.

Another thing I caught....at some point when they changed our flights around, they put us on a connecting flight, but we were still in flight from the first leg of our trip. I got that changed, but it was odd no one else seemed to catch that.

[cruisegirl]

Thanks for your comments. I hadn't thought about the TA part in this in terms of checking documents before they mail them. I wish I had read your notes before I talked them early this morning! But to tell the truth, I don't know why I should be surprised. This is the second thing they've done for this cruise that has been sloppy. The TA agent seemed very surprised and I'm not sure she entirely believed me at first. She is suppose to be "checking" this out and will fax us a receipt for the E-ticket. That was suppose to have happened this afternoon. Guess what! No fax yet!!

Like many of you, we generally book our own flight plans. I feel safer doing that and we certainly have more say over our travel plans. I think this is only the 2nd time we've had the cruise company do the booking. But it was such a fantastic fare ($299) round trip and I didn't think I could beat that.

I'm sure this is all going to be resolved fine.

[twinkletoes4445]

I'm sure this is all going to be resolved fine.

It will and you'll have a great time on your cruise! :)