Flight time

I am sailing out of San Juan in July and I'm trying to book my airfare through Delta. I have found a flight that will leave to come home at 11:20 am. The cruiseline recommends not flying out until noon. My TA says people book this time even though Carnival says not to.

Will I be able to request early debarkation based on this flight time?

This flight will save us $400/person vs. booking the cruiseline airfare. Would you book this flight?

TIA.

I would not book it unless I was doing self-disembark and a low number at that. We had red 1 tags in San Juan and made it reasonably early for our flight, but we would not have been in time for an 11:20 flight.

Ask your TA what she is willing to do for you if the ship is delayed in releasing passengers or if there is a delay at the airport (not unusual at San Juan); if she says she will pick up the cost of re-booking a later flight, then trust her. If she says its your problem, ignore her advice and go with your own comfort level, and insurance. But bear in mind a lot of insurance does not kick in for travel delays until after a specific number of hours of delay, meaning that a 1 hour delay may not be covered if you miss your flight.

I wouldn't count on early disembarkation to make it to the airport on time. All this means is that you'll be one of the first off the ship when it is cleared to start letting passengers disembark. When that is is anyone's guess. Even though the stated time may be 8:00AM, if customs/immigration is going slow that day, there's that one family that is being paged incessently, etc. will delay in the disembarkation happening on time.

This personally happened to me once getting off of Celebrity's Century at Port Everglades. The ship was docked up by 5:00AM, scheduled disembarkation was supposed to start about 8:30. 8:30 came & went while constant pages for the Smith Family kept ringing about the ship. Finally about 9:45 were passengers allowed to start to disembark. We had a late flight out and didn't worry, but there were several people sweating it out with apparent early flights that day.

I second JJPNYC's comments about one group/family/person holding up the whole show. Cabin 9189 was paged repeatedly on the Mercury in Rio a few years ago. The ENTIRE ship was looking for the occupants. Some had onward flights, some had tours. The occupants were in the restaurant eating. When they FINALLY showed up two hours after being paged the first time, they thought it was funny. They were ENJOYING their last day. They didn't give a d**** about anyone else. They let it be known that they were "put out" by everyone else's attitude.

Ship was finally cleared almost 11:00AM (should have been no later than 8:30-9:00AM) There were quite a few who missed their independently booked tours. And a large group missed their tour to Iguazu Falls. The only saving grace was most flights from South America to the USA leave late at night.