Flights changed with Princess EZ Air

[Hlitner]

I really have little clue as to why they want to keep folks away from the real air experts.  We have experienced this problem with both Princess and HAL (they both use the same exact air office and folks).  This has created a real mess with customer service when it comes to air.  We use several high volume cruise agencies to handle our cruise bookings (sometimes more then 100 days a year) and our favorite cruise agent is a young lady who is very sharp and knows her "stuff."  She will not longer handle cruise/air issues for her customers (unless they really insist) because she has become fed-up with the customer service issues at many cruise lines.  They are trying to use cruise reservation clerks as airline experts when most of those reservation folks know less then my dog (and that dog is dead).

The one nice improvement is that both Princess and HAL now have online air booking engines (accessed through their web sites) which let cruisers look at most air options and make their own selections.  But this booking engine has many problems which is what led us to call HAL.  These cruise lines use their own internal booking engine (called Polar) which is pretty decent but not accessible by cruisers.  

The major cruise lines are well aware of the tremendous advantages of having excellent online booking engines and at the rate they are improving their sites we think they might produce something decent in about 50 years!  But meanwhile, cruisers who choose to deal directly with cruise lines will often find themselves dealing with undertrained clerks who are often relegated to reading the "script" that is on their monitor.  Those of us who know how to find good cruise agencies can take advantage to much better trained folks to run some interference and deal with the cruise lines.  But at the moment it does seem like the cruise air options are the weak link.   That being said, it is hard to resist using the Flexair options (offered by Princess and HAL)...especially when it comes to international Business Class.

 

Hank

[Princess Chatterer]

EZ Air is a love hate deal for us.  We’ve seen Princess/AA secretly, without notice,  switch us to a return flight that departs from LAX before the ship even arrives in San Pedro.  Forever on the phone, repeatedly, with Princess to straighen out the mess.  Bottom line:  You must check every week online with the airline before the cruise to see if your EZ Air reservation has been hosed.

[Coral]

30 minutes ago, Princess Chatterer said:

EZ Air is a love hate deal for us.  We’ve seen Princess/AA secretly, without notice,  switch us to a return flight that departs from LAX before the ship even arrives in San Pedro.  Forever on the phone, repeatedly, with Princess to straighen out the mess.  Bottom line:  You must check every week online with the airline before the cruise to see if your EZ Air reservation has been hosed.

This could be said for flights overall. I booked FF miles to Europe recently and I check frequently due to this same reason.

[Hlitner]

When it comes to changes in flights/times I am not sure the blame should go to EZAIR.  We have a huge airline problem in the USA and its called American-Delta-United!  All three of these airlines post their schedules 330 days in advance.  But anyone who takes these schedules as gospel is sadly delusional.  In the world of those three airlines their schedules are only "advisory" and they apparently have no problem changing them at a whim.   I cannot recall the last time we booked flights, far in advance, with any of those airlines without having at least one schedule or flight change.   Wise travelers check on their airline reservations (via the airline's own web site) on a regular basis.  In the case of both American and United we have cases where we booked directly with those airlines and they failed to notify us of changes and even cancellations even though we are frequent flyers with lots of contact info in their system.  When we later inquire why we were not notified we always get faux apologies and a comment that it is a "computer glitch."

Hank

[AF-1]

The major three airlines in the United States review and change their schedule every quarter.  If they need to adjust flight departure times or change equipment; like move from a large aircraft to a smaller one or vice versa; this can mess up seating assignments and connection times;  however, like many here have stated; check your reservation on the airline website at least once a month; especially if you book 330 days in advance.  So my personal story is; I booked with EZ Air and my flight times with Delta has changed twice in the 9 months and I still have four months till my cruise.  I expect a time change again in Nov;  which should be the next update that Delta will make to its schedule