Why does finding flights have to be such a pain?

We have so many airlines and so many flights, but somehow there's nothing to accommodate a 7 day cruise from Seattle on July 28th. Like nobody does direct flights from Pittsburgh area to Seattle. Flights are never anywhere close to the right time of day for arriving/leaving on cruises. Last time I went on a cruise was in Miami. Took the shuttle from the cruise line back to Ft Lauderdale and ended up sitting in front of the check-in counters for like 3 hours because it was too early to even check our luggage, and what else were we going to do with it? Haul it around town and look for a restaurant to chill in? that sucked. Was using my suitcase for a seat.

Have you looked at ITA.matrix? That is one of the more comprehensive listing of flights, although it doesn't show a few of the low cost carries, like Southwest.

If there was demand enough for a PIT-SEA-PIT non-stop, the airlines would do it. They don't just do routes for the heck of it. They do routes that are profitable, and fit within their fleet availability.

Yes, sometimes flights are exactly suited to what we want to do. It happens. To say that flights are always not suited to your needs is tough to factually and objectively quantify, but I have heard many comments about PIT issues with flying. So maybe it is just your airport?

By the way, posting this on the Cruise Air board, here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=128

will get you FAR more flying expertise.

The url is http://matrix.itasoftware.com. Cannot book at this site, but it will give you comprehensive routing and prices.

The url is http://matrix.itasoftware.com. Cannot book at this site, but it will give you comprehensive routing and prices.

Yeah, there isn't **** from Pitt or Cleveland.

If you want direct flights, move to a major hub. Otherwise, you’re always doing connections. The exception to this rule is Southwest. (We live in Dallas and still can’t get non-stops to some places, especially in Europe.)

This is why we fly in the day before - no worries about delays.

On our last flight home, we asked to go standby on an earlier flight, which meant we had a boarding pass so we could get through security but more importantly, they took our bags and checked them. (This will depend on the airline and flight schedules, but we were going home to Dallas from Miami.)

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Guess what, Southwest also doesn't do non-stops PIT-SEA. At least not during the off cruise season.

Again, if there was money to be made...they would do it. As someone else pointed out, cruisers are not a major source of air travelers everywhere. Just because you want to go that route on one particular date, doesn't mean the airline can justify moving 75-250 people (one plane load) on that route daily. Or even a couple days a week. It is what it is.