Globaliser

No, this isn't right. If you wish, you can take a Greater Anglia train from Shenfield to Liverpool Street. The Elizabeth Line trains run in parallel. This is the same as it has long been between Paddington and Heathrow. You can, if you wish, take a Heathrow Express train from Paddington to Heathrow, as has been long established. But you were long able, if you preferred, to take a Heathrow Connect train from Paddington to Heathrow. Latterly, that was rebranded to TfL Rail, and that has now been rebranded to Elizabeth Line. Currently, you need to change twice between Shenfield and Reading even if you stick to the Elizabeth Line, because Paddington <--> Abbey Wood including the central section has been opened as a separate operation to get it started. So Reading <--> Paddington still runs as a separate operation and uses surface-level mainline platforms at Paddington, and the same applies to Liverpool Street <--> Shenfield using mainline platforms at Liverpool Street. But in the late autumn, it is planned that Reading trains will begin to run directly into the central section and use the new deep platforms at Paddington, and Shenfield trains will similarly begin to use the new deep platforms at Liverpool Street. So you will be able to get through trains into the central section from west of Paddington and from east of Liverpool Street. And that was the main aim of Crossrail. It's not finished yet. These benefits are coming. However, this doesn't change the fac that getting from Reading to Heathrow wasn't a primary aim of the project.

The Elizabeth Line has actually been running between Reading and Paddington for a while now. Ditto between Liverpool Street and Shenfield. They were running under the interim branding of TfL Rail until the central section opened and Paddington to Abbey Wood trains started running, and then all three parts simultaneously adopted Elizabeth Line branding. I don't believe so, and I don't think that it should have come as any surprise. Crossrail's primary aims are not about airport connectivity, the market for which is trivial compared to what Crossrail was intended to do. Anyone who's used the Elizabeth Line central section in the last couple of weeks will see just what it is intended to do, and how well it is likely to do it. So from Reading, the RailAir coach is probably still the best bet. (The fact that the demand for this can be provided by a road transfer using low-capacity units shows how small the airport connectivity market is.) From Southampton, there would normally be the alternative of the RailAir coach from Woking, but I think that is still Covid-suspended.

That is not true for a closed loop cruise. More to the point for the OP's question, the PVSA is irrelevant. It simply has no application if the passenger is starting in Seattle and ending in Victoria. There may be other problems that mean that the ship won't allow the passenger to disembark in Victoria. But the PVSA is not one of them.

Isn't that because the aim of the US requirement was to prevent you boarding the flight back to the US unless you have a negative test? That's why the US required the airline to enforce it.

Thanks for the update! It's pages 9-11 and 15-16 in this one.

So far as the PVSA is concerned, is chengkp75's answer good enough? It only concerns transport that starts and ends in US ports. It does not apply to transport that starts in the US and ends in Canada. How about getting it from the CBP itself? The attached file comes from this link on its own website: https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-23?language=en_US - see pages 13-15. ICP Pax Vessel Services Act Apr 2010.pdf

None of this is a problem if it's properly arranged with the ship, just as for immigration/customs to enter Canada. There are other domestic things that need to be sorted out, like closing the shipboard account, but these can easily be done by the ship too. And the PVSA is definitely not a problem for what would become a Seattle --> Victoria one-way international voyage.

That's just a consequence of the fact that the two airports are in different places. The complaint was that Gatwick is in itself more poorly located than Heathrow. That is simply not true. Although going from Gatwick to central London by road is a proposition that resembles one of Dante's Circles of Hell. For most people, there are better ways of doing this. I think I can get from Gatwick to my central London office faster than from Heathrow.

But I don't think that the OP's question is about really about interlining or through-checking. I agree that if the bag is through-tagged across the two separate tickets, then even if the bag misses the first flight it will get sent on to the final destination. If the bag is not through-tagged and misses the first flight, then it's a different situation. The bag will only be tagged to Rome. But suppose the passenger is starting a road trip in Rome that goes through Switzerland and France on the way back to their home in London? The airline can't expect the passenger to stay in Rome and delay or abandon their road trip just to wait for the bag to turn up. The bag will get sent to London and delivered to the passenger's home. Similarly, if the passenger is starting a cruise in Rome, the airline can't expect the passenger to miss the cruise in order to collect the bag. With enough information, the bag will chase the ship along its itinerary. I can't see how it makes any difference if the passenger's next journey is another flight on a separate ticket.

This bit, at least, is simply not true. Gatwick is every bit as much a London airport as is Heathrow. It's a bit like complaining about being flown to Newark instead of JFK for New York City.

I don't think this is how it works. NCL doesn't wait until 30 days before the flight and then start poking around on Expedia to find flights at whatever prices the airlines are then publishing. NCL will have contracted rates already locked in for moving however many units in each direction on each relevant date. The airlines don't have to reserve specific space on specific flights at that stage, but just need to keep enough capacity in the network to cover the contract. Closer to the date of travel, the airlines will have a better idea of which specific flights/routings are under profile, and will then allocate that cheaper space to NCL's contract. That's when you will get told which dregs you are being given. If you want earlier certainty and earlier control, you are better off doing it yourself. You probably don't have the purchasing clout to get the a rate that's similar to NCL's contracted rate, but there are always pros and cons to each alternative. The late great greatam, who was in a related business, posted this on the Cruise Air forum some time ago, which has some more technical detail about deviation:

Are you doing this on a single (through) ticket, or on two separate tickets?

In general, airlines (or handling agents) aren't set up to deal with mass luggage mishandling. The baggage service desks are resourced to deal with the 0.5-1% of passengers who have a missing bag, not hundreds at once. A mass event happened to me once, but the airline sensibly sent on a list of bags that hadn't made it on to the flight. I kept my ears open when I could sense that something had gone badly wrong, so I was able to get my forwarding details on to the list early, and then got out of there before the mess started.

I have a suspicion that for this sort of card, you would pay handsomely/through the nose to buy the card in the foreign currency.

I don't think this is right, if the bags failed to make it on to the flight that they were tagged for and that the passenger flew on. AIUI, major (ie IATA) airlines will try to get the bag to you wherever you are. That, after all, is what happens if your bag does not make it on to your flight to your embarkation city, you stay overnight there, and embark on the ship the next day (note: that would be on a separate ticket). If the airline has enough details, your bag will chase you throughout your itinerary. I once even had my bag come out on the pilot cutter to my (already sailed) ship.

Was it somewhere in the roll call thread?

I would use one in an airline lounge. If you won't have access to an airline lounge, it seems that Auckland normally has a pay lounge called the Strata lounge, although that is not open at the moment (because of the pandemic). It's number 82 on this terminal map. It also looks like there is a public shower just below number 51 on that map. The dotted line seems to be the security border, so you'll be on the correct side if you use that one. I have done this once, in Sydney, and it basically involved remembering to bring a camping towel (one of those zero volume things that's actually more sponge than towel) and some shower gel. It wasn't luxurious, but I'd just flown from London to Sydney, I had no lounge access in Sydney, I had two more flights to get to Dunedin, and I had to be presentable and sociable as soon as I got there - so it was worth the effort.

What's wrong with three hours between flights? Given a choice, and if all other things are equal, I would go for the 3-hour connection over the 1-hour connection here. You won't be sitting around waiting for three hours. It'll take you half an hour to do the circuit through the transit/transfer stream, and you'll need to be at the gate about half an hour before the scheduled departure time of the next flight. So it's actually only two hours of waiting. For me, that's time to have a shower, drink some water to rehydrate, and get a decent and unrushed breakfast.

Ashland is in at least some of the relevant threads: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2854348-amsterdam-rcl-debark-times-and-getting-to-ams-airport/?do=findComment&comment=63262886 https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2850267-time-needed-at-amsterdam-airport/?do=findComment&comment=63169275

As far as I can see, the published Minimum Connecting Time for this is almost certainly 55 minutes. The airline won't allow you to book a connection that's any shorter than that, but at 55 minutes it expects that most passengers will make the connection most of the time. The airline has an incentive not to make it too short, because it incurs costs whenever someone misses their connection. AIUI, the transit/transfer stream simply requires security screening. That would be consistent with an MCT of that kind of duration. There's not a lot of margin if something goes wrong, but there should be plenty of alternative Auckland-Sydney flights to be reaccommodated on if you do misconnect.

Do multi-hour-long queues for security count as disruptions?

My crystal ball isn't feeling very well today. But my guess is that we are likely to see only moderate improvements during the remainder of northern summer 2022; although there are likely to be some increases in capacity, the summer demand peak is yet to come. Then we will enter the season of sickness, and who knows that that will do to the industry this year. June 2023? It seems like next century, so far as predictions are concerned.

Cathay does not make two award seats available in first class. And for the foreseeable future, there are bigger problems with booking on Cathay Pacific in any event.

In the absence of other input, is either of those things a problem? Stansted Airport is not easy even in the best circumstances. Three sophisticated and nearly-middle-aged ladies perform a well-known art song that includes a verse dedicated to the joys of a journey there.

No other country requires you to test and to be negative before you fly there? No other country in the whole world? Really?