Zacharius

8 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

We always book Delta when dealing with Air2sea, and in my past dealings with them, Comfort + is the one category that is not available through Air2Sea. I don’t know why that is. If the price is that close, it might make more sense to ditch Air2Sea and just book direct with Delta. 

Probably because Comfort + is not a different class. It's standard economy class with a little more legroom and one or two other basic perks. As far as I know, Delta uses the same fare codes for full-fare economy and Comfort+ (Y, B, M, W, S) so the system probably can't tell the difference. 

On 9/22/2024 at 8:47 AM, smokeybandit said:

On the flip side, I tell Europeans I'm from the USA. Easier than saying I'm from Colorado and then answering "how far is that from New York City?"

Same thing. Most people are much more familiar with their own countries than any other. And especially the case in the USA since it's largely isolated from the rest of the western world.

I currently live in Kansas but travel internationally for a living. Whenever I tell people I am American, they always ask if I am from California, New York, or Texas. I say Kansas and they just look...confused.

I'm also Namibian, but it's even harder to tell people I'm from Namibia! 

1 hour ago, Riley said:

Enjoying this thread as it moves into airline gossip

Two things: I believe on-time statistics are based upon pullback from the gate, and as someone who has been stuck on the tarmac many times that's flat-out cheating!  Second, our home airport is O'Hare in Chicago. We ALWAYS fly out a day ahead for domestic flights since Chicago can get shut-down weather any time of year... for our cruise out of Miami in February I'm planning two days ahead (might even do three and suck up the extra hotel costs) as that's prime "blizzard" time up here. We will just drive to the Everglades or the Keys for a day or two. 

Pros and cons of Chicago airports. In winter, I often choose to actually fly through Chicago instead of somewhere like Dallas (I'm an AA frequent flier) because I know that Chicago can handle most of the weather. Give me 6" of snow in Chicago over a single flake of snow in Dallas. I've had 1" get me stuck in Dallas for 36 hours (giggity), whereas I've made barely-delayed connections at O'Hare with 6x that snow. 

19 hours ago, Stella said:

Can’t do it on the February 8 2025 cruise.  It is Super Bowl in New Orleans the next day and all rooms are for the Super Bowl.   Looked all around New Orleans   No hotels or they start at $600 a night because of the Super Bowl.  So flying into Houston for the night and taking the 1 hour hopper to New Orleans.   Always a first for everything.  I would not have booked the cruise if I would have known about Super Bowl 

Ha, this happened to me once on a work trip...client asked me to come to Dallas and I failed to realize, despite being a big football fan, that my day of arrival was Super Bowl Sunday, in Dallas. Client must have forgot this too and didn't love my hotel bill for that night! 

22 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

No. That just rehashes that same social media post that everyone else is reporting on.
 

If it's reposted enough, it becomes true

I can't imagine Royal Caribbean's insurers are anywhere close to letting them send a ship and thousands of people back to Labadee. I imagine that will be the biggest guiding factor in any decision. 

On 9/1/2024 at 2:57 PM, twangster said:

Mad Dogs were a favorite of mine.  So quiet in fake first.

As an AA frequent flier, I spent so much damn time on Mad Dogs...love hate relationship. Their maintenance issues were ridiculous and I felt like there was a 50/50 shot they would have to sub out the plane or have some delay for maintenance (not literally 50/50, but like 51/49!). But yeah...when you hear the wind passing by your window because you can't hear the jets, you realize how special that engine config is. 

I remember one time flying in to DFW in first class of a Mad Dog and we could hear the cockpit warnings go off because of wind shear on final. Myself and the guy next to me, having been drinking whiskey together all the way from Hartford, looked at each other and nervously smiled as the pilot laid on the throttle to get us the hell out of there and back around for a safer approach. 

51 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

I am no expert....and I know that you are "in the field" but isn't it true that the on-time statistics are very easily manipulated by the airlines to make it appear that their flights are "on time".  I seem to recall something about airlines' changing the flight number to skew on-time statistics.  Maybe I am misremembering.  

I am no expert on the logistics of airline process but I am a fairly seasoned consumer and I can tell you that there is NO WAY that flying is as comfortable, dependable or reliable these days as it has been in the past...no matter what the statistics say.

I'm not really in the field, per se...I am an aero engineer and I travel a ton, but I am not in the airline business. Airlines do change flight numbers often, though my (possibly incorrect) understanding of the federal government data I was quoting is that, since it's based on airlines as a whole, the changing of flight numbers doesn't impact that data. On the other hand, the statistics within an airline can be skewed (i.e. if you look on United for on-time statistics for flight 1234, the data may be a bit skewed because flight 1234 may not exist all year round, year after year, etc. etc.). However, that's not the data I was pulling/quoting. 

For the 26ish years I have been traveling seemingly nonstop, I do anecdotally find travel more-or-less the same on time, if not slightly better. Part of that comes down to aircraft being newer and better maintained, so for example an airline like Delta or American doesn't have hundreds of MD-80s with seemingly constant mechanical breakdowns that delay their operations. 

Comfort is an interesting one. In economy, I agree, it's not as comfortable as it used to be (though that's a separate convo from our original one). In business/first, it's better than ever. 

On 8/8/2024 at 10:06 AM, JimnKathy said:

Commercial air travel is just so unreliable these days.

On 8/12/2024 at 2:05 PM, packercruising said:

We always fly in a few days early. Flights get delayed. A lot.

This is a common sentiment, but it's actually not accurate. In the US, in 2023, about 78.4% of flights were on time. Looking back historically, the 2010s as a decade averaged about 79% on time, the 2000s about 75% on time, the 1990s about 77% on time. So, almost 80% of flights are on-time these days, and that's the same as, if not slightly above, what it has been for the last few decades. It's still very reliable considering there are tens of thousands of flights with millions of passengers each and every day.  

I guess that "a lot" of flights still do get delayed, because 20% out of 13,000 flights is still a decent number, but your odds of being on an on-time flight are several times higher than being on a delayed flight. 

Still, fly in a day in advance or more. I agree with that 100%. 

2 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Don't give Jason Liberty any ideas. 

Is that the mascot for the 2028 Los Angeles games? 

13 hours ago, at52299 said:

Will we be able to watch any of the Olympics onboard The Harmony of the Seas?  

They will be pole vaulting off the deck at 10:30am, and trampoline is at 2pm if the wind isn't too bad

On 6/14/2024 at 5:09 PM, JazzBassMan said:

Yeah. About double for Park Hyatt. Not a dealbreaker price wise if it’s worth the money. 

It's definitely quite nice. I had a client put me up there twice and it was very enjoyable. Good location, good views, nice restaurant and bar. Last time I stayed there, I stayed across the hall from the (then) number one golfer in the world, so...there's no shortage of people with money staying there too haha. 

(Funny story is we actually sat across from each other on the DFW-SYD flight to get there, and then we opened our hotel rooms the next day to find us across from each other again) 

Out of those, I've stayed in both the Park Hyatt and the Marriott. Both are great. The Hyatt is nicer, but I am assuming you're finding a higher price. 

Also check out The Langham. As a curveball, my colleague tends to stay at the Little National Hotel and has the absolute best things to say about it. It's more mid-range in price and the rooms are smaller, but the location is still great. 

19 minutes ago, FOB said:

 I am really surprised that BA cancelled a flight with less than 24 hours notice though, so I would challenge RC as to when they knew about the change. 

It definitely happens, but it's very odd what happened from what I can tell...G-TTNN appears to be the aircraft that was scheduled on OP's LHR-FCO flight, and the aircraft arrived on time the night before from Rome. While OP's flight was cancelled, and all other LHR-FCO appear to have gone off as planned, G-TTNN did end up leaving that morning on a flight to Athens, albeit about 40 minutes late. On the way back from Athens, it diverted to Amsterdam for a couple of hours...perhaps weather related? None of this answers why OP's flight was cancelled, though. Since then, G-TTNN has continued on its merry way around Europe without issue. 

14 minutes ago, Crown&AnchorEsq said:

I did always think that Air2Sea was a guarantee that you would board but it looks like that is not 100% the case. 

This is an incredibly important realization that everyone needs to have. Air2Sea does a great job of marketing speak to make it sound like a guarantee, but a true guarantee does not really exist. Air2Sea can't create new routes, can't create new planes, can't create new seats or kick people out of current seats. There aren't always airports, flights, or even laws that allow them to drop people close to every cruise port. 

Do they try the hardest they can? Maybe...I don't know, sometimes it seems like it and sometimes it doesn't. But there's definitely no 100% guarantee. 

7 hours ago, steverk said:

When I read the travel advisory from the US state department https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/haiti-travel-advisory.html it sounds like federal employees and their families are not permitted to travel to Haiti.  

That's a rather large number of people who can't go on cruises to Labadee. 

Not quite what that means. This message, which is common to locations that have violence or other emergencies, means that the families of embassy staff in Haiti + non-essential embassy staff have been evacuated. Only the absolute bare minimum US embassy staff (and US military security, most likely) remains. This is not a blanket statement that US government employees/families can't go to Haiti. There's nothing stopping a US Department of Energy employee and their kids (just an example) from going to Haiti right now...other than common sense. 

On 6/4/2024 at 6:19 PM, sleepy425 said:

That said, when we don't have kids with us we just either stay on the ship or go to the Pirate Republic Brewing.  

We always get out and at least walk around if not find a new part of town to see (we're very adventurous travelers with tons of third world travel experience, so even the sketchy parts of Nassau are a worthwhile expedition for us!). But we always hit up Pirate Republic. Is the beer particularly good? Hell no. But it's decent, and I always like to get a good buzz on and start chatting with the pirate-in-residence. 

"ARGGGHHH YEEE WELCOME TO PIRATE REPUBLIC MATEY hey you should get the stout, it has nice cocoa and roasted coffee flavor with licorice undertones and an OG of 1.045 ALL HAND HOY AT PIRATE REPUBLIC ARGH" 

57 minutes ago, Aprnmom said:

Doing a 5 day cruise from ny to Bermuda in October. I get motion sickness. How bad are the seas that time of the year ?

As mentioned, there's just really no way to know. And it can change quickly in any direction, too. I remember one Atlantic cruise where we woke up and the seas were angry...like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli. I'm largely immune to seasickness, so I literally had the entire pool to myself for a few hours because most people (including my wife) were in their cabins sick. By the afternoon, it was sunny, clear, the pool was packed with everyone making up for lost time, and you'd have never known it was anything but beautiful an hour or two before. 

43 minutes ago, ScottD said:

But you CAN fly without a Real ID.... they keep pushing that back, but pretty sure it's not required until next year. 

Hell, you can fly without any kind of ID if needed. My friend lost his ID in Vegas (of course) last year and made it home without. He had two other things with his name on it (I think a credit card and frequent flier card) and he had to do extra security checks, but he made it. 1/10 would not recommend, though. 

I'm not sure but I bet it's a Norwegian guy with either barely an accent or an extreme, incomprehensible accent and definitely nowhere in the middle 

5 hours ago, barjpoe said:

thanks, I was afraid of that. I know FLL is doable as it only a few minutes away, but didn't MIA was. drats

The fact that you are coming in to Port Everglades but leaving out of Miami is a very important detail that was left out. That traffic can be a pain and any little hiccup can make for a very stressful end of a relaxing vacation. I wouldn't do it. 

On 4/13/2024 at 8:01 PM, smokeybandit said:

AIr2Sea doesn't change flights. The airlines do.  
 

Legit question - is this 100% fact? As someone who flies constantly, I know that airlines change their schedules frequently...but I also know that Air2Sea is looking for the deal that is best for them, so it wouldn't surprise me if they make changes at times too so that it benefits them financially. 

21 minutes ago, tonyfsu21 said:

This would be more of a hassle logistically than just driving IMHO. 

Yeah that's my thought too. Brightline is definitely making some trips within Florida a bit easier, but this isn't one of them. 

I have absolutely no idea how it works on cruise ships, but I help out at my buddy's brewery + cocktail bar once or twice a month as needed and we do something a bit similar to what it sounds like may be happening there. We have a main bar area where people can walk up, order, and sit at as space allows. We also have roaming servers but when they take an order, and on busy days it redirects those orders back to a "behind the scenes" back bar. This is so that we have fewer bartenders bumping in to each other (and slowing things down) up front. On quieter days, it's not rerouted and the back bar isn't used too much. 

Some newer Starbucks do things like this too, in that they have two prep areas - one for drive-thru and one for in-store. 

On 3/15/2024 at 5:38 PM, Doug_Texas said:

The U.S. State department has said there are hundreds of U.S. citizens in Haiti wanting to leave and they have no plans to rescue them (said in briefing today, 3/15).

Not saying it's fact, but I am going to throw my two cents in as someone who travels to a lot of developing/third would countries, has been caught up in political situations multiple times, and still chooses to go. And I'm a US citizen (as well as a citizen of another, much less advantageous country). 

I know what I am getting in to when I go to places like Haiti, Somalia, C.A.R., etc. There's always a chance of something happening when I am there. Always. I can't count on my government to bail me out. Would it be nice if they do? Heck yeah. But there have been two occasions where they have not and I needed to get myself out of the country OR find some way to be safe while there. It's just the risk you take. I'm also guessing a lot of those US citizens are actually dual citizens living in Haiti (in addition to the more obvious aid workers and such). 

However, rescuing a few hundred US citizens is probably a lower priority to the US government than thousands of citizens on a cruise ship. That's just the way it is. 

Finally, it looks like the US government has since run a flight from Cap Haitien to Miami for US citizens. It only had like 30 people on it. I don't see them even trying to get a flight in to Port-Au-Prince.