??? About Viking Air & Bergen

[molymoo]

I recall that there was a time when Viking would not extend the offer of "custom air" for flight itineraries that included flights into or our of Bergen.  Is this still the case?  

We just got our flight information and we have a ridiculously early flight out of Bergen.  We have had to deal with crazy early flights all too often and it is miserable . 

Is there any point in calling to address this?  

[tubeamps]

I don’t know if they have changed their policy or not. When we flew out of Bergen in July 2017 we had the same situation. Met our group for the bus about 4:30am, find luggage etc, was at the airport a little after 6am. Awful.

 

This year we are avoiding early flights out of Hong Kong. We decided the last night of the cruise was irrelevant and to avoid the morning crush we booked a red eye leaving at 12:30am using Viking Air.

 

Good luck, but I suspect that you are stuck with your flights.

[ropomo]

We have Viking Air Plus into Bergen in May.  Arranged flights we wanted.  

[cruzzzinma]

We have custom air  flights into Bergen arriving Mar 12.  No custom air used to be the policy for Bergen but that changed a couple of years ago.

Edited February 27, 2019 by cruzzzinma

[molymoo]

Apparently I jumped the gun ... read the entire text of the email and they do suggest that I can call and (for a fee) make other arrangements.  I will certainly be doing so!

[lackcreativity]

When did use custom air on our trip into Bergen this year, but be aware that it is a small airport and the flight choices are limited. It was one of the most taxing journeys we have taken. (Except for the time our flight home from Barcelona was canceled when we got to the airport and they had to rebook 300+ people on the spot, but that is a different story!)

[Steve Q]

Our “Trade Routes” cruise on The Star ended in Bergen last June. We had to depart around 5 AM for our trip to the airport. We reside in the DFW area but it still required 3 flights to return home.

This June we are doing ”The Midnight Sun” cruise. We purposely chose to depart from Bergen and return from London. We just received our flights and are very pleased. While it will still require 3 flights to get to Bergen, we are not departing DFW until 11 AM and we arrive in Bergen at 10 AM the next day. Our return flight from London is a non-stop to DFW. It is perfect.

Next year we are planning a 14 day cruise to The British Isles and Ireland. Our plans are to sail with Crystal in July 2020 as the voyage begins and ends in London. While Viking offers a similar cruise, once again it ends in Bergen. We have no desire to visit Bergen for a third time or spend an overnight there. It is just not a convenient airport. Honestly, I wish Viking would change some of their northern itineraries so that Bergen is not so frequently visited. Just my opinion.

We love sailing on Viking and will continue to use them in the future (we will have to see what Crystal is like), but just not itineraries that feature Bergen.

[moatenote]

When choosing which direction to go on a cruise, we always look at possible flights into and out of each of the end points,  Bergen is one of the worst to fly out of, so if at all possible, we choose Bergen as our starting point and another city as the end. 

[Peregrina651]

1 hour ago, Steve Q said:

Our “Trade Routes” cruise on The Star ended in Bergen last June. We had to depart around 5 AM for our trip to the airport. We reside in the DFW area but it still required 3 flights to return home.

This June we are doing ”The Midnight Sun” cruise. We purposely chose to depart from Bergen and return from London. We just received our flights and are very pleased. While it will still require 3 flights to get to Bergen, we are not departing DFW until 11 AM and we arrive in Bergen at 10 AM the next day. Our return flight from London is a non-stop to DFW. It is perfect.

Next year we are planning a 14 day cruise to The British Isles and Ireland. Our plans are to sail with Crystal in July 2020 as the voyage begins and ends in London. While Viking offers a similar cruise, once again it ends in Bergen. We have no desire to visit Bergen for a third time or spend an overnight there. It is just not a convenient airport. Honestly, I wish Viking would change some of their northern itineraries so that Bergen is not so frequently visited. Just my opinion.

We love sailing on Viking and will continue to use them in the future (we will have to see what Crystal is like), but just not itineraries that feature Bergen.

 

But, Bergen is their "home" port. The ships fly under the flag of Norway and the owner of the company is Norwegian. Their first ship was christened in Bergen. I just don't see Bergen being dropped from the itineraries.

[sarch99]

As an alternative to flying out of Bergen, we are taking the seven hour, supposedly beautiful, Bergen to Oslo train and flying out of Oslo.  The train goes straight to the Oslo airport, and we are staying at the Radisson Blu at the airport the night before our flight.  Much better flights home and a pleasant overland interlude after our cruise.  

[Dauntless]

Bergen is not nearly as difficult as Viking makes it seem.  I did not use Viking Air and was able to fly out of there at 9:30 to Copenhagen and then to Dulles.  We did not leave the day the cruise ended and opted to stay at the airport hotel the night before so we didn't have to transport that morning.  It does have 46 flights a day out of the airport and is Norway's second largest city but they don't do things on a 'Grand' scale yet it is not like flying out of the home airport in the series wings either.  To get back to the states in the same day you can't leave mid-afternoon.

[just_dont]

2 hours ago, sarch99 said:

As an alternative to flying out of Bergen, we are taking the seven hour, supposedly beautiful, Bergen to Oslo train and flying out of Oslo.  The train goes straight to the Oslo airport, and we are staying at the Radisson Blu at the airport the night before our flight.  Much better flights home and a pleasant overland interlude after our cruise.  

Agreed.  Oslo is the preferred airport.  It's supposed to be one of the best in the world.  We'll be finding out in June

It was a lot easier to find flight options to Oslo than Bergen.

[molymoo]

19 hours ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

But, Bergen is their "home" port. The ships fly under the flag of Norway and the owner of the company is Norwegian. Their first ship was christened in Bergen. I just don't see Bergen being dropped from the itineraries.

 

And frankly, Bergen is such a charming city it is almost worth the effort.  We finally decided to stick with the flights that were booked with Viking ... leaving the ship in the middle of the night will be a pain but the rest of the flights are great and we will get home in the early afternoon which is always nice.  We also are okay with KLM and other options would likely mean some of the other less desirable airlines ( like Icelandic).  We were able to upgrade our seats on KLM pretty easily and cheaply so we will be reasonably comfortable as well.  Now we can look at the shore excursions and get ready for that booking window!

[molymoo]

16 hours ago, sarch99 said:

As an alternative to flying out of Bergen, we are taking the seven hour, supposedly beautiful, Bergen to Oslo train and flying out of Oslo.  The train goes straight to the Oslo airport, and we are staying at the Radisson Blu at the airport the night before our flight.  Much better flights home and a pleasant overland interlude after our cruise.  

 

We took that extension last summer and enjoyed the train ride ... it WAS stunningly beautiful ... and we enjoyed two nights in Oslo which is a lovely city.  We chose the extension largely so that we could fly out of Oslo rather than Bergen and guess what ... Viking booked us on a 5:55 AM out of Oslo!   If I t know better  I might think it was personal!

[sarch99]

I’ve learned to pay the extra $50 for Custim Viking Air. 😀

[vnb2003]

On 2/27/2019 at 6:59 PM, Dauntless said:

Bergen is not nearly as difficult as Viking makes it seem.  I did not use Viking Air and was able to fly out of there at 9:30 to Copenhagen and then to Dulles.  We did not leave the day the cruise ended and opted to stay at the airport hotel the night before so we didn't have to transport that morning.  It does have 46 flights a day out of the airport and is Norway's second largest city but they don't do things on a 'Grand' scale yet it is not like flying out of the home airport in the series wings either.  To get back to the states in the same day you can't leave mid-afternoon.

We did exactly the same. Bought our own tickets and stayed in Bergen an extra day (end of June 2018). Left ship at 10:30 am and stroll to the hotel. Spend a wonderful day in Bergen. The weather was perfect around 70-72F and blue sky. Our flight was next day at 2:30pm so we had quiet morning and no hurry great breakfast. We took airport shuttle that I booked in advance from home(very cheap). The shuttle’s first stop was right at the hotel. There were only 7 of us. The bus was clean, very comfortable, and the seats had USB ports. It took us around 40 min to get to airport. We flew by Islandic to Reykjavik and then to Dulles. Business class was more like Premium Economy but service was very good and flights were short.

We always had only one stop when we used Air Plus. We like the control over our flights. The Air Plus has a different price depending on airport. Last year we were quoted $150 pp because of Bergen. Sometimes the flights are good through Viking but sometimes it’s better to do this ourselves.

[CCWineLover]

On 2/27/2019 at 3:55 PM, sarch99 said:

As an alternative to flying out of Bergen, we are taking the seven hour, supposedly beautiful, Bergen to Oslo train and flying out of Oslo.  The train goes straight to the Oslo airport, and we are staying at the Radisson Blu at the airport the night before our flight.  Much better flights home and a pleasant overland interlude after our cruise.  

 

Sounds great!  We plan to try to do the same thing when arriving in Bergen at the end of the "Into the Midnight Sun" cruise.  I have heard the train ride is spectacular and that Oslo is a great place to visit.

Would enjoy hearing how your adventure turns out.

[knoxclone]

Thats our plan as well - enjoy the train trip and then spend 2 days in Oslo before heading home. Airport Train in easy and fast.

[iluv2cruztoo]

We almost canceled our upcoming cruise from Reykjavik to Bergen because of the difficulty in finding flights home to the Orlando, FL airport.  We were using miles, not Viking Air. 

[iluv2cruztoo]

We almost canceled our upcoming cruise from Reykjavik to Bergen because of the difficulty in finding flights home to the Orlando, FL airport.  We were using miles, not Viking Air. 

[iluv2cruztoo]

Sorry, I think my thought got posted prematurely.  As I was saying, we almost canceled our upcoming cruise from Reykjavik to Bergen because of the difficulty in finding reasonable flights out of Bergen to get back home to Orlando.  But then my husband suggested connecting in London.  I booked a shuttle on Norwegian Air, leaving Bergen at 9:15 AM and arriving in London Gatwick at 10:30 pm.  We will spend the night near Gatwick and fly home the next day on a non-stop flight on Virgin Atlantic, using our Delta frequent flyer miles. 

[iluv2cruztoo]

56 minutes ago, iluv2cruztoo said:

Sorry, I think my thought got posted prematurely.  As I was saying, we almost canceled our upcoming cruise from Reykjavik to Bergen because of the difficulty in finding reasonable flights out of Bergen to get back home to Orlando.  But then my husband suggested connecting in London.  I booked a shuttle on Norwegian Air, leaving Bergen at 9:15 AM and arriving in London Gatwick at 10:30 pm.  We will spend the night near Gatwick and fly home the next day on a non-stop flight on Virgin Atlantic, using our Delta frequent flyer miles. 

Correcting my typo:  The flight arrives in London Gatwick at 10:15 am-- It's a 2 hour flight, loses an hour.

[twodjs]

We did something similar - took the latest shuttle from the ship to the airport (around 9:30 am - no crazy wake-up call) took a later flight ending in Heathrow - overnight stay, then non-stop flight from Heathrow to Seattle on a beautiful Virgin Atlantic Dreamliner. Crazy to spend so much money on a cruise and not pay the extra few bucks to have the flight and seats you want at a price that was still lower than booking with the airline. Very surprised booking agents don't always strongly suggest the flight diversion or custom air to take the angst out of the travel to or from the cruise. Worth every penny! The train to Oslo also sounds like a fabulous choice. Adding the extra day is so worth it!

[I like vacation]

On 2/28/2019 at 12:11 PM, sarch99 said:

I’ve learned to pay the extra $50 for Custom Viking Air. 😀

 

Best $100 I had to spend on my upcoming trip.  I really didn't want to leave the hotel around 3 am for a 6 am departure from Prague.  The 11:50 departure was worth the extra cost.

[Cyber Kat]

On 2/28/2019 at 11:12 AM, molymoo said:

 

We took that extension last summer and enjoyed the train ride ... it WAS stunningly beautiful ... and we enjoyed two nights in Oslo which is a lovely city.  We chose the extension largely so that we could fly out of Oslo rather than Bergen and guess what ... Viking booked us on a 5:55 AM out of Oslo!   If I t know better  I might think it was personal!

 

LOL. We are doing the Oslo extension for our Trade Routes cruise next year, but we are starting there and ending up in Barcelona. I’ll see what the flights are like in Barcelona.  Maybe we will do a deviation and fly home the next day. I read somewhere that someone took a train to Madrid and flew home from there. 

 

We are on the east coast, so afternoon flights work for us.