Just wondering - airfare to Europe

I have been watching airfare to and fro Barcelona via Minneapolis for an October 2014 cruise. I have not seen a RT air fare lower than 1200$ for several months on ChoiceAir, Kayak or any airline for that matter. Never paying more than 900$ for any European RT ticket in the past, I am looking for advice from my fellow CC cruisers in terms of booking or waiting. What do you think?

Thanks:confused:

I have been watching airfare to and fro Barcelona via Minneapolis for an October 2014 cruise. I have not seen a RT air fare lower than 1200$ for several months on ChoiceAir, Kayak or any airline for that matter. Never paying more than 900$ for any European RT ticket in the past, I am looking for advice from my fellow CC cruisers in terms of booking or waiting. What do you think?

Thanks:confused:

Wait for a couple of months, then start checking with choice air about the first of March.

Anything can change with airlines and fuel prices but I've had good luck with C/A my last three cruises on X.

Last November MSP to Heathrow was $394, this Oct was $508 to Rome. (Both were one way on Delta)

Airline prices have been increasing the past year or so. With all the consolidations consumers loose out. With airfares I believe in "how big of a gambler are you? Some time waiting pans out. If you have flexibility you have a better chance of finding a discount

Wait but check daily.

Airfares are going up. Doubt that will change. Consider other airports than msp. Sometimes (many times) it is cheaper to connect through msp than to fly from it. We are from NE Iowa and always check fares from rst, CID, dsm, mcw, dbq, and msp. I'm sure there are others north and west of msp that I would check if I lived in msp. Depending on driving time you can decide if the cheaper airfare is worth it.

and remember...what you paid in the past has nothing to do with what you will pay in the future.

 

Last November MSP to Heathrow was $394, this Oct was $508 to Rome. (Both were one way on Delta)

Nothing to brag about. What you got was 1/2 of a RT ticket (someone on another cruise got the other 1/2 of the ticket in the opposite direction). AND with all the restrictions Choice Air most likely has on their cheapest tickets (which you won't know about because you CANNOT read the ENTIRE fare rules most of the time).

I have been watching airfare to and fro Barcelona via Minneapolis for an October 2014 cruise. I have not seen a RT air fare lower than 1200$ for several months on ChoiceAir, Kayak or any airline for that matter. Never paying more than 900$ for any European RT ticket in the past,

In my experience, $1200 in October is about average for a "regular" ticket purchased directly from the airline.

 

Last November MSP to Heathrow was $394, this Oct was $508 to Rome. (Both were one way on Delta)

I'm guessing that was a consolidator-type fare purchased through Choice Air or similar?

I don't think their schedule goes out as far as October yet, but I suggest you check Icelandair in a few months. MSP is one of the cities they serve. You will have to make a stop in Iceland but from there they fly to Barcelona. Their fares are very reasonable.

We flew Icelandair at the end of last September and had a very enjoyable experience and would recommend them.

$1200. for Delta roundtrip from MSP to Barcelona sounds reasonable for Oct.2014.

If you are going in early or staying late after the cruise you have more flexibilty.

But t is up to you if you want to wait to save $200. or if you are willing to pay $200. more by waiting.

It is a crapshoot either way.

I paid about $1,000. back in 2008 for the same route on NWA.

Nothing to brag about. What you got was 1/2 of a RT ticket (someone on another cruise got the other 1/2 of the ticket in the opposite direction). AND with all the restrictions Choice Air most likely has on their cheapest tickets (which you won't know about because you CANNOT read the ENTIRE fare rules most of the time).

I used Choice Air twice last year and was extremely well pleased........don't knock it if you haven't tried it. :rolleyes: We had absolutely no restrictions or any other problems with any of the flights.

I used Choice Air twice last year and was extremely well pleased........don't knock it if you haven't tried it. :rolleyes: We had absolutely no restrictions or any other problems with any of the flights.

If you are talking about having no problems with the flight, then that's all well and good.

However, the "restrictions" we refer to are not ones that may affect you before the flight. They are provisions within the fare rules of the ticket....which I would bet just about my entire net worth that you never a) saw, b) had available to you or c) realized how they might impact you in an irops situation.

When all goes well, Choice Air tickets are virtually indistinguishable in that they get you on the flight, with your luggage, to your destination. However, it's when it doesn't go well that the "restrictions" come to the fore. And you don't know those in advance. Thus you are buying a pig in a poke.

So...just what were those "restrictions" that you thought weren't a part of your Choice Air tickets??

I used Choice Air twice last year and was extremely well pleased........don't knock it if you haven't tried it. :rolleyes: We had absolutely no restrictions or any other problems with any of the flights.

You said it yourself: "we had no...problems with any of the flights." If you had, you might have found out just what restrictions were likely attached to your ticket.

it's when it doesn't go well that the "restrictions" come to the fore. And you don't know those in advance. Thus you are buying a pig in a poke.

 

Exactly!

Check and see what the airfare would be if booked through the cruise line. That last two TA/s we did were on Cunard and Celebrity and both were a significantly lower price on the OW air then anything I could book independently.

If you are talking about having no problems with the flight, then that's all well and good.

 

However, the "restrictions" we refer to are not ones that may affect you before the flight. They are provisions within the fare rules of the ticket....which I would bet just about my entire net worth that you never a) saw, b) had available to you or c) realized how they might impact you in an irops situation.

 

When all goes well, Choice Air tickets are virtually indistinguishable in that they get you on the flight, with your luggage, to your destination. However, it's when it doesn't go well that the "restrictions" come to the fore. And you don't know those in advance. Thus you are buying a pig in a poke.

 

So...just what were those "restrictions" that you thought weren't a part of your Choice Air tickets??

You said it yourself: "we had no...problems with any of the flights." If you had, you might have found out just what restrictions were likely attached to your ticket.

 

 

 

Exactly!

So, instead of lashing out at my comments, maybe it would be more helpful if either of you explained what restrictions these Choice Air flights have. It might actually help me or others in choosing or not choosing Choice Air in the future. Also, would travel insurance not come into play for those restrictions, whatever they are if you had a problem? Without more knowlege of "restrictions" or other problems associated with Choice Air tickets, I would book them again in order to save thousands of dollars. I checked prices for the same one way flights before booking through Choice Air. So, if I had paid $1500 pp instead of $500pp(example prices), I would not have any of these "restrictions"??

So, instead of lashing out at my comments, maybe it would be more helpful if either of you explained what restrictions these Choice Air flights have. It might actually help me or others in choosing or not choosing Choice Air in the future. Also, would travel insurance not come into play for those restrictions, whatever they are if you had a problem? Without more knowlege of "restrictions" or other problems associated with Choice Air tickets, I would book them again in order to save thousands of dollars. I checked prices for the same one way flights before booking through Choice Air. So, if I had paid $1500 pp instead of $500pp(example prices), I would not have any of these "restrictions"??

This has been discussed over and over in this forum.

The biggest restrictions are NON ENDORSABLE-you cannot use your Choice Air ticket on another airline-you are STUCK with the original TICKETING airline which may or may not have seats for you to get you to your cruise in a timely manner and NON REROUTABLE-you MUST take the original routing even IF the original ticketing airline could get you on another plane on another route to get you to your cruise on time. Both of these restrictions could totally TRASH your vacation if you misconnect, have a delay or cancellation.

And one other restriction-say you cancel your cruise before final payment. You haven't lost any money on your cruise. BUT you have paid in full for your Choice Air ticket. Depending on how the ticket was written (which you don't know because Choice Air does not provide that info), your ticket may be NO GOOD at all, not even for residual value after change fee, because it was written under the cruise/vacation package rules. Don't take the cruise-airline ticket is NO good.

Travel insurance will allow you to buy a new ticket. BUT you have to pony the money up front for a very expensive last minute walk up ticket. THEN you get reimbursed after you fight and hassle with the insurance company. AND you need to check the policy carefully. A lot of them have a MINIMUM time you have to be delayed before they will pay off. Example: Your flight out of XXX to YYY leaves at noon. That flight is cancelled. The next flight you can get on with your Choice Air ticket leaves at 6PM. You will miss the cruise. BUT there is a 12:30PM flight on another airline that has availability and you COULD buy a very expensive walk up ticket and still make your cruise. IF you do this, your travel insurance very well MAY NOT pay for your walk up ticket because you weren't delayed their minimum (most policies are 6 hours).

Just an FYI-US airline DO NOT sell cheap ONE WAY tickets. But foreign airlines do. All the time we recommend people going to Europe for a TA check Aer Lingus, Icelandair, Air Transat, Air Berlin (but since they joined OneWorld their prices are not as cheap) and LOT (Polish airline). They all sell TRUE one way tickets at very, very reasonable prices without the non endorsable and non reroutable restrictions. The Middle Eastern airlines are expanding rapidly and a few of them have very cheap one way flights into Europe.

There is a whole lot more to an airline ticket than a cheap price.

PS-if you paid $500 or so for a one way ticket to/from Europe, you really didn't get a bargain. What you got was 1/2 of a RT ticket with another cruiser using the other 1/2 going the opposite direction. $1000-1200 is about average for a RT ticket to/from Europe for a repo cruise. AND your ticket was purchased by the cruise line more than a year in advance of the flight and has been "sitting on a shelf", so even that little extra time frame can make a BIG difference in the price.

I don't think all choice air tickets are the same. We used them twice last year and after booking with choice air we only dealt with the airline (delta) every time they had schedule changes. They, as far as I could tell were just regular, nonfefundable tickets, just like I would have bought myself directly from airline if price was similar.

I'm sure they also on occasion sell the deeply discounted "consolidator" tickets, but ours weren't those.

So, instead of lashing out at my comments, maybe it would be more helpful if either of you explained what restrictions these Choice Air flights have..... Also, would travel insurance not come into play for those restrictions, whatever they are if you had a problem?

Greatam gave a good explanation, but I'll give an example. Actual friends of mine were scheduled to fly from Tampa to Paris last Thursday, via JFK. Due to the weather mess, they could not get there on Thursday. I'm not sure of the details...either the flight from TPA to JFK was delayed to where they'd have missed the connection, or maybe the JFK to CDG flight was cancelled altogether, I'm not sure, I just know they couldn't go on Thursday and had to leave TPA and go home. They were rerouted via ATL on Friday instead. Now, this was not for a cruise and they had booked directly with the airline, but suppose they were flying to Paris to take a river cruise and had booked Choice Air and had, unbeknownst to them, gotten consolidator tickets. It's quite possible that, as Greatam said, their tickets might have been non-endorsable and non-reroutable. Being non-reroutable means they wouldn't have been able to get rerouted through ATL. The ticket was for a connection at JFK, so that's where they'd have had to connect. Never mind that maybe there were no available seats on a flight to JFK, or from JFK to Paris until, say, Sunday....they'd have been stuck and missed the cruise. Non-endorsable is similar.... in this case it might have meant that Delta could not endorse their tickets over to American or United if one of those (or another airline) did have flights that would get them through JFK last Thursday while Delta's were cancelled.

To be sure, sometimes even with such restrictions an airline might waive them. If the pax can be accommodated and doing so will free up space needed on another flight on which other pax will need to be accommodated, the airline MIGHT say "oh never mind the restrictions, we can make this happen." And not all Choice Air tickets have all of those restrictions, but there's really no way to tell at the time of purchase. You have to decide if that gamble is worth the money savings.

So again, if all goes well, you'll likely never know your Choice Air tickets were any different. It's when things go haywire that you see the potential downsides.

I don't think all choice air tickets are the same. We used them twice last year and after booking with choice air we only dealt with the airline (delta) every time they had schedule changes. They, as far as I could tell were just regular, nonfefundable tickets, just like I would have bought myself directly from airline if price was similar.

 

I'm sure they also on occasion sell the deeply discounted "consolidator" tickets, but ours weren't those.

You're right- all choice air tickets are not all the same. Maybe yours were "regular" tickets, maybe they weren't. Maybe the type of schedule change wasn't one that kicked a particular restriction into play, or maybe the airline waived a restriction because for some reason it benefited them to do so. But the fact that you "only dealt with the airline" doesn't really mean anything. People constantly say, "Oh, I know my tickets aren't restricted because I was able to go on the airline website to choose my seats and everything." That means little, if anything.

So, instead of lashing out at my comments, maybe it would be more helpful if either of you explained what restrictions these Choice Air flights have. It might actually help me or others in choosing or not choosing Choice Air in the future.

Sorry that speaking factually is "lashing". There is a very comprehensive sticky at that top of the forum....it's there so that this information can stay there for anyone to find.

Also, would travel insurance not come into play for those restrictions, whatever they are if you had a problem?

Without more knowlege of "restrictions" or other problems associated with Choice Air tickets, I would book them again in order to save thousands of dollars.

Waterbug and greatam explained other aspects quite well, so no need to rehash.

We had non stop Delta flight from ATL to FCO, and added miles to our Delta accounts. We have paid $1600 rt to Europe a couple of times, so not just searching out the cheapest flights available. Checking several different sites, I couldn't get anywhere close to the one way prices we got for the Choice Air flights. Earlier in the year my Choice Air flight was on United from Barcelona to Memphis through Newark. For those who knock Choice Air without ever trying it because there MIGHT be a problem, that's your decision. I would use it again.

For those who knock Choice Air without ever trying it because there MIGHT be a problem, that's your decision. I would use it again.

I truly do not understand how explaining the limitations of choice air is "knocking" it. And yes, on at least one occasion we used cruise air/choice air, whatever it's called, because it was the right option at the time. But the decision was made eyes wide open, well aware of the risks and willing to accept the consequences.

Under a similar set of circumstances we would use it again -- without any expectation of having the full fare protections of independently purchased air. Think of it this way - the money you pay for the cruise and the transportation to get to the cruise is an investment. The payoff (ROR) is the enjoyable experience. Would you invest in a stock without understanding and accepting the potential risks and downsides? Would you invest in cruise air without at least an understanding of the limitations? Apparently, many people do. And some get very defensive about the lack of knowledge, as though that's a plus.

For those who knock Choice Air without ever trying it because there MIGHT be a problem, that's your decision. I would use it again.

Why would I try something that I KNOW in advance could present a problem? And because of the lack of transparency with Choice Air, I wouldn't have a clue what that problem was until it hit me in the face when I did have the problem.

You just need to avail yourself of options and start thinking out of the box to find tickets that are NOT restricted at just about the same price as Choice Air. And a very good place to start is http://www.itasoftware.com/

When you start flying 50,000 miles or more per year, you just KNOW there is a chance on every flight that there may be a problem. And you plan in advance for it. You know what alternatives you have and how to make those work. Can't do that with a Choice Air ticket because you DON'T know what alternatives you have until the problem presents itself.

It is just a shame that leisure travelers THINK they have purchased the same ticket with the same rights, perks and alternatives as they would have with a ticket purchased directly from the airline. Then they find out when a problem occurs that they bought the proverbial pig in a poke and are stranded or delayed or otherwise treated like second class citizens.

All of the us that post frequently on this forum have repeatedly asked the Choice Air cheerleaders to provide us either the ENTIRE fare code (usually the only thing anyone can produce is H, L, N, Q, S, etc., etc.-that is NOT the ENTIRE fare code), the ENTIRE fare rules or a ticket number. NO ONE has ever been able to provide any of these three IN FULL. Which means Choice Air passengers have NO IDEA what they purchased other than they got a cheap price and a ticket from point A to B.

With a little out of the box thinking, that cheap price could have very well been duplicated on the foreign airlines with generally a much better experience. Foreign airlines bend over backwards much more than US carriers to help their passengers in most situations. As Flyertalker posted, it is time to "think more creatively than "United/Delta/American".

..

All of the us that post frequently on this forum have repeatedly asked the Choice Air cheerleaders to provide us either the ENTIRE fare code (usually the only thing anyone can produce is H, L, N, Q, S, etc., etc.-that is NOT the ENTIRE fare code), the ENTIRE fare rules or a ticket number. NO ONE has ever been able to provide any of these three IN FULL. Which means Choice Air passengers have NO IDEA what they purchased other than they got a cheap price and a ticket from point A to B....

our choice air flight coming up in march:

Per Passenger Billing and Ticketing Information

FARE DETAILS: MLI DL X/ATL DL MIAxxx.09KA14A0VA DL ATLxxx.30LA14A0NJ DL MLIxxx.30TD21A0QA USDxxx.69END ZP MLI3.90ATL3.90MIA3.90ATL3.90XF MLI4.5ATL4.5MIA4.5ATL4.5

Fare: XXX.69 USD

Taxes/Carrier-Imposed Fees: XX.91

Subtotal Per Passenger: XXX.60 USD

Paid with UATP ending 0016

Detailed Tax Information

AY 10.00

US 44.31

XF 18.00

ZP 15.60

Total: 87.91

Total

Fare: xxx.38 USD

Taxes/Carrier-Imposed Fees: xxx.82

Total: xxx.20 USD

NON-REFUNDABLE / CHANGE FEE

When using certain vouchers to purchase tickets, remaining credits may not be refunded. Additional charges and/or credits may apply and are displayed in the sections below.

This ticket is non-refundable unless issued at a fully refundable fare. Any change to your itinerary may require payment of a change fee and increased fare. Failure to appear for any flight without notice to Delta will result in cancellation of your remaining reservation.

All Economy Comfort and Preferred seats are Nonrefundable.

____

I don't know if this is the "entire" info you mean, but it is what I can see on delta.com.

There are a lot of "codes" in there...not sure if they mean anything or not.

For those who knock Choice Air without ever trying it because there MIGHT be a problem, that's your decision. I would use it again.

And for those who are convinced that you got the exact same ticket you would have gotten if booking directly through the airline, and are further convinced that Choice Air "guarantees" you'll make it to the cruise, that's YOUR decision.

I don't think any of us have "knocked" Choice Air; we simply point out the potential risks for the benefit of those who are open-minded enough to accept that maybe they don't know everything there is to know about air travel. Once you know the risks, you can make an informed decision as to whether the cost savings is worth the risk. Not everyone will agree whether it is or not.

our choice air flight coming up in march:

 

FARE DETAILS: MLI DL X/ATL DL MIAxxx.09KA14A0VA DL ATLxxx.30LA14A0NJ DL MLIxxx.30TD21A0QA USDxxx.69END ZP MLI3.90ATL3.90MIA3.90ATL3.90XF MLI4.5ATL4.5MIA4.5ATL4.5

The bolded areas are the fare basis for the various segments.

MLI DL X/ATL DL MIAxxx.09KA14A0VA means that you fly DL from MLI to MIA via ATL for a "fare" of xxx.09 with a fare basis of KA14A0VA.

DL ATLxxx.30LA14A0NJ means you fly on DL back from MIA (noted previously) to ATL for a "fare" of xxx.30 with a fare basis of LA14A0NJ.

DL MLIxxx.30TD21A0QA means you fly on DL from ATL (noted previously) to MLI for a "fare" of xxx.30 with a fare basis of TD21A0QA.

USDxxx.69END means that the whole "fare" is xxx.69, with the END saying this is the end of the "fare construction". Beyond that are the listing of other taxes and fees beyond the "fare".

Now....going to ExpertFlyer, I did searches for those fares in their fare information section. For none of the three segments, did any of those fares show up as a published fare in the GDS system. Which means, they are almost certainly.....non-published fares, aka negotiated/bulk/consolidator.

Perhaps others with more powerful tools or direct GDS access may get a different result, but that's just one man's research.

Is this inherently "bad"? The answer is "well, kinda". I say that because of the unknown factor of just what ARE the rules for these tickets. The DL computers would have the data, but because of the unpublished nature, they aren't distributed to the public, as would be for published fares.

However....a big THANK YOU for giving us this data point for us to work from.