Flight Seat Assignments

[BJS]

OK all, I tried again. This past weekend I called Princess and the service rep said to call back during the week and speak with the Air Department who will be able to assist me.

 

Just got off the phone with Princess and the rep tried to transfer me to the Air Department and then told me that they do not take outside calls. So the only thing that she was able to do was put in a note that my party wishes to sit together. I was on the phone with them for a total of 20 minutes while being placed on hold many times. The entire call was really dissappointing. I am beginning to wonder if booking the air through Princess was really a deal after all. (Perhaps you do get what you pay for.)

 

Thanks to all of your suggestions.

 

The air department does take outside calls if you have booked your cruise with Princess directly and if not they take them from your TA. This is how you can do an air deviation up to 320 days in advance and choose the flights you want.

 

With Princess air you do have to get your own seat assignments but most of the time the airlines automatically assign seats in the rear of the plane when a booking is made, even if Princess is the one who has booked the flights, and you have to then go online and change them to the seats you want or call the airlines.

I told her that calling Air Canada and speaking with a person will cost $25.

Most airlines when you call have a recording telling you that there will be a fee to speak to an agent but this is just for making a booking. The airlines will give you the option to speak to an agent about an existing booking. Is this not the case with Air Canada? We have never been charge by several airlines to speak to an agent about an existing booking.

 

It should be possible to find out what seats you have from the airlines. It will be on virtuallythere once the e-tickets are purchased. Princess has sent that link along with the flight information to us even without air deviation once the tickets have been purchased. If you booked with a TA you wouldn't get that email.

 

I'm not sure how Air Canada works but did you try going to the airlines web site and entering your confirmation number to find your flight? From there you can usually change your seats or obtain seats.

 

Do you have an Air Canada frequent flyer program available. Often it is easier to get your seats online once your flight is linked with your ff number.

 

Princess air can be a good deal for some flights but for others booking directly can be a better deal. We have always linked our frequent flyer numbers with the Princess flights but only once have we not done an air deviation to choose our own flights and then be able to get our seat assignments about 45 weeks before flying when the seating is wide open.

 

Good luck!

[Times Prince]

further information can be obtained via www.virtuallythere.com, you will need to call princess for your locator # and password, if it is not on the personalizer.

 

This is really an outstanding link for flight planning when arranged by Princess. The locator number is contained within the Travel Summary from the Princess web site as "Reservation Code" under the my flights section.

 

(cont. below)

 

Definitely call Lufthansa for seat assignments. BTW-They are a wonderful airline compared to those based in the U.S. we felt.

 

As for virtually there, if I am remembering correctly, the password to add was 'PRINCESS' when we had to check ours some time back. But we did need that locator number, which our TA provided for us.

Toto, that was exactly right - all that is needed is your name and reservation code to get in and then use "Princess" as the password. What can be simpler?

 

With this system I was able to access both United Airlines and Lufthansa to obtain my seating assignments. I could not find this information using Lufthansa's web site direct passenger login.

 

I also have had the opportunity to access this site for a rescheduled cruise ("move over" opportunity). This time I was booked on American, and the Reservation number could be used to access the booking directly on their site. From the www.aa.com site I was able to create seat assignments and associate our frequent flyer numbers with the reservation. Interesting to note is the American Airlines site had a note stating "This reservation may not be modified online", which was a concern.

 

Now I used www.virtuallythere.com to access my reservation and found both the seats I just selected and our frequent flyer numbers were part of the booking. This was great confirmation after the warning note on the carrier's web site.

 

The combination of the airline web sites and virtuallythere's Princess Cruises Air Services web site provides the ability to make and confirm minor changes within the existing flight reservation.

It helped provide great peace of mind.

[rocmoss]

Princess booked us with American and i was able to go onto their web site and select seats. I just needed to reservation number which i found through princess on the personalizer page.