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Can I trust the cruise line on airfares?


BillderBo
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i like to control two things—the remote control and air travel. Last cruise, I let the cruise line make my air reservations along with the cruise arrangements. I felt the cruise rep was annoyed that I didn’t just take the flights as offered. Like they were doing me a favor. And I am sure it was not the best price. But I purchased trip cancel protection thru the line, and because of that I got a refund on the flights when we had to cancel the cruise due to health.

 

So I am inclined to let them make the flight reservations again. But it is hard to give up control on routing and price.

 

 

What is your experience? What do you recommend?

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We would never trust a cruise line or anyone else to make our air reservations. We do use Cruise Air (especially on HAL and Princess) where we can pick and choose our flights....if the cruise/air deal is a much better price. With International Business Class some of the cruise line's will have deals that can be less then half the price of normal prices.

 

Regarding fares anyone can easily check fares on decent search engines like Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia, etc.

 

Hank

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With the wonders of the Internet, you need to, and can, fairly easily, do your research to figure which is the better way to go on each flight situation you come across. Some the airline will be the same or better. Some the cruise line's airfare will be better. THERE IS NO ONE ABSOLUTE answer to all the situations you may need to book.

 

You also need to understand what kind of fare you are getting from the cruise lines...typically consolidator fares, which have very heavy restrictions, and may likely put you very low on the list when problems arise, causing flight changes. But the plus would be the ability to cancel with little or no penalty...something usually not available to the general public with regular airline fares.

 

There are many discussions about the issues of consolidator fares here.

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Cruise Air...okay. I’m going international on HAL. I’ll check into that.

 

 

HAL now uses the same flight booking engine used by Princess (although HAL calls it by a different name and the online steps are a bit different). With HAL you must first have a cruise booking to use their online air system. Once you have a booked cruise and it is within 330 days of your return date (this is a limitation on the availability of air reservations) you can simply go into your HAL reservation (using your online account) and pull up the various air options. They will usually have some "Flex Air" fares which you can book without any obligation. Flex Air can be canceled or changed up to 45 days prior to the first flight....assuming that you have not made a special request to have the flights ticketed. Its really a win-win for the cruiser since you can lock in a deal with HAL (prices for Flex Air rarely increase once you have booked) and then keep looking around for better deals. In fact you can keep checking HAL's web site to see if there are better deals...in which case you simply change your reservation.

 

Hank

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And trip insurance through the cruiseline is another pitfall to be well researched before making both purchases and assumptions.

 

A true understatement :). We have often cautioned folks that cruise line policies generally include awful medical coverage. Folks spend lots of money for cancellation options where their liability is already limited to the cost of their cruise vacation...but they pay little attention to medical insurance where their potential liability is virtually unlimited. It is shocking that cruise lines are still including medical with limits as low as $10,000....which might not even cover a single day in a hospital.

 

Hank

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i like to control two things—the remote control and air travel. Last cruise, I let the cruise line make my air reservations along with the cruise arrangements. I felt the cruise rep was annoyed that I didn’t just take the flights as offered. Like they were doing me a favor. And I am sure it was not the best price. But I purchased trip cancel protection thru the line, and because of that I got a refund on the flights when we had to cancel the cruise due to health.

 

So I am inclined to let them make the flight reservations again. But it is hard to give up control on routing and price.

 

 

What is your experience? What do you recommend?

 

 

I don't understand your concerns. You state that you like to control the air travel of your trip then state you let someone else do it and was not happy with the result. (paraphrasing). I don't know why this is even a question for you. Make your own flight reservations and be done with it. Don't over think this.

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I don't understand your concerns. You state that you like to control the air travel of your trip then state you let someone else do it and was not happy with the result. (paraphrasing). I don't know why this is even a question for you. Make your own flight reservations and be done with it. Don't over think this.

I posed the question for two reasons:

  1. With only one cruise/airfare purchase experience under my belt, I don't really know if cruise lines offer airfares competitive with other avenues (self-serve, other travel agents, consolidators, etc.).
  2. "I purchased trip cancel protection thru the line, and because of that I got a refund on the flights when we had to cancel the cruise due to health." I am weighing that advantage with the higher pricing I might expect to get booking through the cruise line.

There is so much we just don't know until we ask other people's experiences. Yes, I like to control the remote. It is my nature. But pay me $200 to let someone else hold the remote and I might be persuaded. Everything is relative.

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I posed the question for two reasons: With only one cruise/airfare purchase experience under my belt, I don't really know if cruise lines offer airfares competitive with other avenues (self-serve, other travel agents, consolidators, etc.).

 

Do your research. Check on prices through multiple sales channels. However, be very aware that the product sold by third parties may very well be quite different from what you get from the airline directly. Same flights, dates, times but very different underlying fare rules. It's not just a straight apples to apples comparison. And if you can't know the fare rules and the restrictions on your ticket, you can't make an informed decision. As Globaliser has said, when all goes well, you won't notice the difference, but when it goes pear-shaped....

 

 

"I purchased trip cancel protection thru the line, and because of that I got a refund on the flights when we had to cancel the cruise due to health." I am weighing that advantage with the higher pricing I might expect to get booking through the cruise line.

 

 

You make it sound as if you could ONLY have gotten such a refund with cruiseline insurance. Could you have gotten that same refund with another insurance carrier? Quite likely, and probably with better coverages at less cost, IMO.

 

 

But pay me $200 to let someone else hold the remote and I might be persuaded. Everything is relative.

 

 

So take the information provided and make your own rational, informed decision.

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The only time I booked a flight through the cruise line was when Avalon offered Gainesville-Newark-Zurich RT for $200. No way am I ever doing that again because it required flying on embarkation day, so we had no time to recover from jet lag six hour time difference).

 

 

The reason I booked my Prince Sapphire and Holland America Volendam cruises on my own (which I will call OMO) was so I could fly a day early at the times I wanted. I read somewhere the cruise lines only offer same-day or red-eye flights so you are not guaranteed to make it before muster.

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The only time I booked a flight through the cruise line was when Avalon offered Gainesville-Newark-Zurich RT for $200. No way am I ever doing that again because it required flying on embarkation day, so we had no time to recover from jet lag six hour time difference).

 

 

The reason I booked my Prince Sapphire and Holland America Volendam cruises on my own (which I will call OMO) was so I could fly a day early at the times I wanted. I read somewhere the cruise lines only offer same-day or red-eye flights so you are not guaranteed to make it before muster.

 

You might be interested to know that HAL and Princess both allow cruisers to book cruise/air online...and their search engine displays many flight options. With those lines you can also input nearly any date both pre and post cruise if you want to fly-in early or do a post cruise delay.

 

Hank

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A true understatement :). We have often cautioned folks that cruise line policies generally include awful medical coverage. Folks spend lots of money for cancellation options where their liability is already limited to the cost of their cruise vacation...but they pay little attention to medical insurance where their potential liability is virtually unlimited. It is shocking that cruise lines are still including medical with limits as low as $10,000....which might not even cover a single day in a hospital.

 

The keyword to look for is trip insurance. People who are at high risk of canceling anything - cruise, flight, hotel, you name it - that has already been paid for need coverage for the whole trip. If you get cruise insurance, but not flight insurance, you pay for flights you did not taker. Conversely you could fly to your embarkation port, only to have something happen prior to boarding, and be stuck in a hotel trying to get cruise refunds. This topic goes way beyond flight cancellations.

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We actually have a forum section for all vacation insurance topics, so let's get back to airfare.

 

 

For me the top priority when choosing flights is not money. It is flight times and dates. I don't care how cheap a flight is if I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. or have a 30-minute layover. Once several flights in my permissible time range are selected, my choice can depend on prices.

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For me the top priority when choosing flights is not money. It is flight times and dates. I don't care how cheap a flight is if I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. or have a 30-minute layover. Once several flights in my permissible time range are selected, my choice can depend on prices.

 

So, have you actually researched flights and times, or are you wanting us to do that for you?

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“Same flights, dates, times but very different underlying fare rules. It's not just a straight apples to apples comparison. And if you can't know the fare rules and the restrictions on your ticket, you can't make an informed decision. As Globaliser has said, when all goes well, you won't notice the difference, but when it goes pear-shaped.... “

 

This is precisely the risk with cruise air. It seems to be impossible to learn the restrictions and the type of ticket until things go bad. The trade off for saving money and the flexibility to change flights and even lower cost is turning things over to a cruise line rep when things go wrong. And the accounts are very mixed as to how helpful they are.

 

Since things rarely go wrong and so many of us go a day or more early before a cruise, it is even hard to ascertain how effective the cruise lines are when your flight is cancelled or delayed. When things go south, is it the cruise line or airline who is in control?

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  • 2 weeks later...

For the life of me I can not figure out EZair’s pricing.

Our domestic ticket in December is $486 on every website. EZair’s price is $826.00 down from 858!?

 

Our ourseas cruise tickets are well below what any website is showing.EZair business class is about the

price of a coach ticket everywhere else! It’s a real deal!

 

How does this pricing work? Does anyone have info from the EZair inner sanctum?

RB

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How does this pricing work? Does anyone have info from the EZair inner sanctum?

 

Pretty straightforward. CruiseAir like products are negotiated contracts with non-published fares in many cases. When you buy a plane ticket you're not just buying a seat from A to B, you're purchasing all the restrictions, endorsements, etc. with a plane seat that gets you from A to B. Cruiselines buying in bulk can also negotiate certain terms on airfare in order to try and get the prices down. The problem for the end consumer is that you don't know exactly what you're buying and where those restrictions as part of your discounted ticket can affect your travel.

 

If you buy a brand new washing machine directly from the realtor you get the washing machine and a warranty etc. etc. If you buy that brand new washing machine from a guy on the side of the road you still get the new washing machine but what happens if it breaks down after 6 months. Buying a cruise air ticket is like buying a washing machine from the side of the road.

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The only time I booked a flight through the cruise line was when Avalon offered Gainesville-Newark-Zurich RT for $200. No way am I ever doing that again because it required flying on embarkation day, so we had no time to recover from jet lag six hour time difference).

 

 

The reason I booked my Prince Sapphire and Holland America Volendam cruises on my own (which I will call OMO) was so I could fly a day early at the times I wanted. I read somewhere the cruise lines only offer same-day or red-eye flights so you are not guaranteed to make it before muster.

 

 

Not true, at least with HAL. We booked flights through HAL's Flight Ease for our flights to Rome prior to a transatlantic cruise in 2016. We picked the flights we wanted on the airline we wanted and flew 6 days before our cruise. The price we got through Flight Ease was a lot lower than anything we could find on our own. We were very happy with the whole experience.

 

We have just booked flights through Flight Ease again, for a flight to Rome this November. Again, it will be one week prior to our cruise and the price was very good.

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