Arvia - Return Flights

[mps69_1999]

Looking for some advice and reassurance

Sailing on the Arvia next year, Southampton to Barbados, and we’ve selected the extra night after we arrive at in Bridgetown.

How does this work, ship arrives, we don’t get off that day, assuming there isn’t another sailing until the following day?

 

As for flights, when are we likely to know the flight times…. I’ve tried looking for flights from Barbados back to the UK (London), but can’t see anything.

I’m hoping to organise back home to Scotland from a London airport sooner rather than later.

What’s been other people experiences?

[wowzz]

You will likely be flying out of Barbados late afternoon, arriving back into London shortly after 6am the following day. Unfortunately,  P&O do not normally issue precise timings very far in advance, so that is just speculative. 

On arrival in London, you would have to do through Border Control, collect your luggage, and then check in for your flight to Scotland,  pass through security etc. 

Personally I would want a minimum of three hours between the arrival from Barbados and the departure time to Scotland. Even then, as we all know,  flights can be delayed. 

So, after,  all that, my preference would not to book any flight earlier than 11am ! 

[ElmaLee]

You should have an extra night on board in port.  What month is your cruise?

you may be able to guesstimate your flights by looking at the similar ones in January 2023 when Arvia does it’s first TA.

[mps69_1999]

The cruise we're on is October '23, just less than a year away, so wasn't expecting P&O to have the flight details up until about 2 months before the cruise.

I was hoping we'd be flying with BA, and I'd get BA flights from London back to Scotland, therefore I could get my luggage checked in all the way through, but from what I'm reading that might not be the case.... not real hardship.

I'll definitely making sure I'm leaving enough flight transfer time... long gone are the days where I'm running between terminals 😁.

 

[wowzz]

3 minutes ago, mps69_1999 said:

The cruise we're on is October '23, just less than a year away, so wasn't expecting P&O to have the flight details up until about 2 months before the cruise.

I was hoping we'd be flying with BA, and I'd get BA flights from London back to Scotland, therefore I could get my luggage checked in all the way through, but from what I'm reading that might not be the case.... not real hardship.

I'll definitely making sure I'm leaving enough flight transfer time... long gone are the days where I'm running between terminals 😁.

 

Highly unlikely that you will be flying BA. 

Do you even know which airport you are using ?

[mps69_1999]

At this point I don't have any idea where we'll be flying back into, just know we're flying back from Bridgetown. Don't even know if it will be a direct flight or we'll be bouncing out of the US, fingers crossed I hope not.

Making a massive assumption it's going to be a London airport.

I'm not really bother which one, most will service flights to central Scotland, either Edinburgh or Glasgow 

[Bill Y]

6 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Highly unlikely that you will be flying BA. 

Do you even know which airport you are using ?

Where you offered a choice of regional airports, there is normally Manchester or sometimes Birmingham and Glasgow but they can get booked up. Normally for the London Area Gatwick is used for the P&O charters.

[wowzz]

7 minutes ago, mps69_1999 said:

At this point I don't have any idea where we'll be flying back into, just know we're flying back from Bridgetown. Don't even know if it will be a direct flight or we'll be bouncing out of the US, fingers crossed I hope not.

Making a massive assumption it's going to be a London airport.

I'm not really bother which one, most will service flights to central Scotland, either Edinburgh or Glasgow 

It will most likely be a TUI charter, and certainly will not go via the US.

As Billy says, surely you must know which airport you selected when you booked the cruise? 

[mps69_1999]

Sounds like I'll need to go double check with the TA who we booked with if we nominated a return airport, as I honestly can't remember at this moment. Normally I'm all over these things.

Better checking before I really start looking at flights.

[BrianI]

On the P&O website there are also flights to Birmingham and Manchester for an additional £50.

I would suggest Manchester as you can then get a train from the airport to Scotland.

Brian 

[crimson moon]

For your guidance we are doing this cruise in January and our return flight leaves Bridgetown at 17.30 on the Saturday and is scheduled to arrive back in Birmingham at 5.25 on the Sunday morning. It is a charter flight using TUI.

 

We selected our airport at the time of booking and it should show on your confirmation invoice

[wowzz]

4 hours ago, crimson moon said:

For your guidance we are doing this cruise in January and our return flight leaves Bridgetown at 17.30 on the Saturday and is scheduled to arrive back in Birmingham at 5.25 on the Sunday morning. It is a charter flight using TUI.

 

We selected our airport at the time of booking and it should show on your confirmation invoice

Excellent information.  Goes to show that my 6am arrival time is about right.

But Birmingham is somewhat unusual in allowing such early arrivals. I remember sitting on the tarmac in numerous US/Canadian airports,late at night,  waiting to take off,  but being held until they would  arrive into LHR  after 6am. 

 We will be flying into BHX next December,  so the eta is useful to know.

 

 

[Megabear2]

10 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Excellent information.  Goes to show that my 6am arrival time is about right.

But Birmingham is somewhat unusual in allowing such early arrivals. I remember sitting on the tarmac in numerous US/Canadian airports,late at night,  waiting to take off,  but being held until they would  arrive into LHR  after 6am. 

 We will be flying into BHX next December,  so the eta is useful to know.

 

 

The first charrer flight into Gatwick on 30/12 this year is due to arrive 5.30 !  We are on the second with 6.30am.

[wowzz]

1 minute ago, Megabear2 said:

The first charrer flight into Gatwick on 30/12 this year is due to arrive 5.30 !  We are on the second with 6.30am.

Sorry, my experience was primarily flying into LHR, after two or three day trips to NA. 

 

[Megabear2]

1 minute ago, wowzz said:

Sorry, my experience was primarily flying into LHR, after two or three day trips to NA. 

 

No problem. I thought the OP wanted London flight information so added to your BHX link out of laziness.

[wowzz]

Looking at Ezy flights out of LGW to EDI for this November,  I'd be booking the Yotel and getting the afternoon flight.

 That is what we did when flying back from the US, and connecting to Ezy for our flight home to Spain. Six hours sleep, a shower,  and ready to go !

[mps69_1999]

Thanks to the information, it's all very useful.

After a little bit of investigation, and checking paperwork, we are flying back into London.

I checked to find out if we could have flown back to a Scottish airport, but that option wasn't available, only London, Birmingham and Manchester. No great hardship at the end of the day.

[wowzz]

15 minutes ago, mps69_1999 said:

Thanks to the information, it's all very useful.

After a little bit of investigation, and checking paperwork, we are flying back into London.

I checked to find out if we could have flown back to a Scottish airport, but that option wasn't available, only London, Birmingham and Manchester. No great hardship at the end of the day.

Which London airport ? Obviously not LHR.

[mps69_1999]

Doesn't say, paperwork states we'll get more information as soon as it becomes available... usual hurry up and wait 🙄

Taking LHR out of the equation, narrows things down to Gatwick or Stanstead.

 

[wowzz]

5 minutes ago, mps69_1999 said:

Doesn't say, paperwork states we'll get more information as soon as it becomes available... usual hurry up and wait 🙄

Taking LHR out of the equation, narrows things down to Gatwick or Stanstead.

 

Or Luton ?

[Megabear2]

44 minutes ago, mps69_1999 said:

Doesn't say, paperwork states we'll get more information as soon as it becomes available... usual hurry up and wait 🙄

Taking LHR out of the equation, narrows things down to Gatwick or Stanstead.

 

As an early booker there is very little chance you will be allocated anything other than Gatwick and I personally would take that as 99% certain.  Over the past 9 years - we did cruise Caribbean in January 2020 and December 20221 so no years missed for pandemic - the Gatwick flights have departed around 5.00pm from Barbados every single time and arrive at around 6.00am on average.  We have had delays but never more than an hour or so and the aircraft tend to make up the time.  This year the arrivals are scheduled for 5.30am and 6.30am.

 

The only serious delay I have heard of in recent times was in January 2020 when due to an aircraft failure on an incoming flight to Barbados we sailed a day late and instead of visiting Curaçao had an extra day in Barbados.

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Megabear2

[galeforce9]

Agree with timing although on one of our p&o tui Thomson flights, don’t recall the year but probably around 2011/12, we had boarded at Bridgetown, not all had, and there was an engine problem pre departure.  They stopped boarding but left us on whilst they did a full engine test.  Quite scary and noisy.  Didn’t fill me with confidence.   We were about 3 hours late taking off.  There were also lots of other delays that time. Generally people were kept on the ship longer if they knew incoming flights were delayed and some were by 6 hours