Malta Oceana re-positioning cruise

Hi

We are flying out October 18th from Manchester flight leaves at 05:55, can anyone advise if we will have time to look round the port before it sails.

Hayley

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We leave Manchester on the 4th October and have the same timed flights. Had not been notified, but checked cruise personaliser when I saw your post.

That flight time is a bit of a shock, thought it would have been later than that, but with TC I expect they need to make sure the flight actually gets there! May just be our bad luck, but we have had a lot of delays with them. We are staying on until the ship returns to Southampton, so will be on your cruise as well.

Do not know about being able to leave the ship when you arrive, but if you can the town is very near - we have been a few times on cruises and a land holiday. I assume you would need to be on board for the drill though. I see the flight is due in at 10.25 am (Malta is one hour ahead, I think) and the airport is nearby, so should get to the port by midday. I see that our itinerary gives the ship as leaving Valletta "Early Evening" on the two change over days that we will be calling into Malta (including your embarkation date), but not sure what that means.

Thanks Tring

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Just wondering if we will have to pick cases up at Malta airport, or will they go straight to the ship if they have been loaded on a P&O flight? Have not done a fly cruise for a while with P&O and cannot remember what happened, but I think the bags went straight to the ship.

Also, anyone know what time the other flights go out? Wondering if we will beat those passengers to check in, which would be some consolation for the early start

Just wondering if we will have to pick cases up at Malta airport, or will they go straight to the ship if they have been loaded on a P&O flight? Have not done a fly cruise for a while with P&O and cannot remember what happened, but I think the bags went straight to the ship.

 

Also, anyone know what time the other flights go out? Wondering if we will beat those passengers to check in, which would be some consolation for the early start

We join Oceana in June and I imagine the flight times are similar through the season. We don't arrive in Malta until about 6 pm so definitely enough time for those arriving midday to have a few hours in Valetta in the afternoon. It's an easy walk-off - get the lift up to the higher level (5 minute walk - right out of port and across the road) and just explore.

I was researching our flight recently and noticed they said something about if you were on a Thomson flight there would be no need to collect luggage at Malta Airport as it would go straight to the ship but if with other carriers, you would have to pick up your cases and presumably take them to waiting coaches. (Think I must have read that on the CP).

Just wondering if we will have to pick cases up at Malta airport, or will they go straight to the ship if they have been loaded on a P&O flight? Have not done a fly cruise for a while with P&O and cannot remember what happened, but I think the bags went straight to the ship.

 

Also, anyone know what time the other flights go out? Wondering if we will beat those passengers to check in, which would be some consolation for the early start

We are joining the ship on 4th October and sailing back to So'ton. Our flight leaves Bristol at 6.00 a m. According to posts on another site we will probably have to pick up our luggage at the airport but I'm not sure about yours I think it depends whether P&O have taken the whole flight. Or flight is with TC.

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Found the reference - from the Cruise Personaliser:

Hold Luggage

Baggage allowances vary by carrier, route and class, and may not be the same for all flights in your itinerary. The baggage allowance on UK domestic flights may be less than on international flights.

Your baggage allowance can be found within your flight information below.

For our Mediterranean fly-cruises, those travelling on a Thomson Airways charter flight will not need to collect their baggage on arrival; it will be collected on your behalf and securely delivered to your cabin.

If you're flying with any other airline, including Thomas Cook Airlines, easyJet and Jet2, you’ll need to collect your luggage from the baggage carousels on arrival at the airport.

We did the Malta - Southampton repositioning in October 2017.

We flew from Birmingham at 6.30am with Thomas Cook and arrived in Malta around 10.15am. After collecting our luggage we followed the line of P & O reps to the coaches. The driver loaded our luggage onto the coach and the next time we saw them was in our cabin some hours later. We were on board ship by 11.30am.

If we had wanted we could have left the ship and gone into Valletta for the afternoon/early evening as we didn't set sail until 9pm

Just looked a cruise personaliser again and the details of who needs to pick up luggage is there. Previously they must have been in the process of putting the data up as the flight details were in a different style on the screen and there was no extra writing with it. We are TC so will need to collect luggage. At least we have 23 kg luggage allowance.

CP says that people on Thomson and TC charters can book seats about 14 weeks before, but looks like our flight is not a charter as it is on sale, so not sure what happens about that - perhaps TC's regular system, so I will look at their website tomorrow.

Thanks for the replies all.