Booking with Viking Air

[Bunt]

How far in advance will they allow you to book your flight if you pay the $50.00 for Plus air?

[Cyber Kat]

How far in advance will they allow you to book your flight if you pay the $50.00 for Plus air?

 

 

 

We did it 10 months out when the flights became available.

 

 

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[sailaway5]

Can you get Custom Air even though we have the "free air" on our new booking?

Thank you all for your input. I am learning a lot for our First Viking Cruise.

[Cyber Kat]

Can you get Custom Air even though we have the "free air" on our new booking?

Thank you all for your input. I am learning a lot for our First Viking Cruise.

 

 

 

We had “free air” on our Grand European and we were able to use Viking Air Plus aka Custom Air to get the flights we wanted.

 

 

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[CruisingAgain]

We are considering a river cruise and just starting to look. I wasn't considering Vikings Air because I figured they would pick the cheapest ... meaning we would have a couple connections and middle seats not together.

Are you saying that we can pay $50 (if the option is available) and then tell them what flight we want?

And after it is booked we can pick our own seats (with a seat fee I assume - but that's okay)

 

And one more question .... everyone on this thread seems to use a TA? Do they get you better rates? Or what is the reason for not booking directly with Viking?

[Cyber Kat]

We are considering a river cruise and just starting to look. I wasn't considering Vikings Air because I figured they would pick the cheapest ... meaning we would have a couple connections and middle seats not together.

 

Are you saying that we can pay $50 (if the option is available) and then tell them what flight we want?

 

And after it is booked we can pick our own seats (with a seat fee I assume - but that's okay)

 

 

 

And one more question .... everyone on this thread seems to use a TA? Do they get you better rates? Or what is the reason for not booking directly with Viking?

 

 

 

Yes - if you use Viking Air without paying the $50 pp fee, they book you on flights that work for them, often odd ours, with multiple connections.

 

If you pay the Viking Air Plus fee you have a lot more choices for your flights. It helps to do some checking before you call the Air Plus number (after paying the fee). Pick our a few flight options that work for you. There may or may not be additional costs involved. It pays to be somewhat flexible.

 

For instance, we had picked out flights on United because we were in their FF program. They were not Viking partners at the time, so we had to pay more for those flights, but the Viking rep suggested Delta flights at nearly the same time and the same nonstop direct routing. We took the Delta flights and they were great. Delta has become our new go to airline.

 

Do keep in mind that If you want to fly in a day or a couple of days early and/or stay later without doing the Viking extension, there is also a $100 deviation fee.

 

If you go to the Viking website and look in the air section there is a list of their Air Partners. Those are the airlines they have deals with so if you can find acceptable flights with those airlines, you are less likely to incur any extra fees.

 

We have booked directly with Viking and we are also working with a TA on our latest cruises. Viking limits what TAs can do regarding discounts and perks, but they should be able to get you some onboard credit. We are doing pre and post extensions independently, so a TA becomes one stop shopping.

 

 

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[waterbug123]

However, you sure did take your "revenge." While other passengers had two connections, we had 4 connections in each direction, some layovers over 8 hours! in the middle of the night in airports where nothing was open

 

Do you believe Viking was justified in booking our air travel in 4 segments each way (we do not live in a small town. We fly out of Seattle, a major airport on the west coast). We were forced to travel for nearly 48 hours in each direction......How do you think Viking should have handled this?

 

I highly doubt that anyone was "taking revenge" on you. More likely, since it was only a month out, there was limited availability on flights that would have reduced the number of connections and the time of your layovers. Viking probably booked whatever was available to them, given whatever their contract was with the airlines. It's unfortunate that you were not made aware of the flight itinerary earlier (probably because your flights weren't actually ticketed until then) but you could probably could have exercised your option to just cancel the Viking air and book your own flights. It might have cost more money, but sometimes you get what you pay for and paying extra to get the flights and connections you want can be well worth it.

[3rdCoastFan]

For those that booked air via Viking, do you recall what fare class ticket you were issued?

 

We're doing the Rhine Getaway next year and are flying from ORD -> AMS via United and then BSL -> MUC -> ORD via Lufthansa. These flights are within the allowance for flights that we got when we booked the cruise.

 

My hope is to use MileagePlus miles to upgrade our Economy seats on the United flight but I know that upgrades can be dependent on the fare class of the initial ticket. I used United's "expert mode" for searching flights and it appears that many upgrades are available for my flight. When I search for a one-way flight, I get an option to book Economy and then spend 20,000 points to upgrade to Business. However, when I search for a roundtrip, the option to upgrade changes to $550 + 20,000 points.

 

We were quoted a $400 upcharge for Premium Economy on Lufthansa. That seems... okay. I'd prefer to avoid the bidding options that come up just before the flight and it seems like my existing UA miles and other credit card points won't transfer well to LH's Miles&More program. I'd like to know what the cash option looks like to upgrade from Economy to Business on LH but I am unable to find a specific figure (and I understand that it's based on the specific trip; even a range like $750-1000 would be helpful).

 

Viking would put us in Business for all legs of the flight for another $3,000.

 

I didn't find too many recent threads in the Cruise Air forum but happy to post the same question there. I poked my toe into FlyerTalk but, man, I need to study a glossary before I can make much headway there!

[Respbj]

How far in advance/end of a sailing can I make my travel dates? We are doing Octoberfest pre-cruise so will want to fly at least a week prior to sailing and not sure how long we might want to stay after or what we might want to do? .

We just did this however Viking charges $100 pp for a change from the itinerary. We did custom air $50 pp but are staying an extra 2 weeks after our cruise for which we were charged another $100 pp. So you can do it but it will cost extra. If it's not free airfare you may want to consider making your own air reservations.