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Flights by Celebrity Watch Out


esmoov

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We booked Millennium this June out of St. Maarten. Decided to book through Flights By Celebrity (FBC).  Paid more for a direct flight to and from and also for leaving at reasonable times. Paid approximately $450 p/p. More specifically, the flights I purchased were leaving JFK at 11 a.m. the day before embarkation and 2:00 p.m. on the return.  Connecting flights and earlier times were significantly cheaper.  First, FBC changed the out bound flight to 7:00 a.m.  This is a problem since getting to JFK is always an issue and this adds $150 since Uber is a premium at 3:00 a.m. - Complained and they changed the flight to 8:30 out of Newark. Today they change the return flight to a connecting flight - now making this a 9 hour return flight and again adding an additional $100 Uber premium by the time we get out of the airport at 1:00 a.m.  If I had booked this flight originally it would have been $80 less p/p.  Now FBC wants $225 p/p to change the tickets. Really??  So I paid a premium for the direct flights that they were selling, they change them to the less expensive fairs and keep the difference...and want to charge $225 per ticket to change the tickets. Watch Out...

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52 minutes ago, esmoov said:

We booked Millennium this June out of St. Maarten. Decided to book through Flights By Celebrity (FBC).  Paid more for a direct flight to and from and also for leaving at reasonable times. Paid approximately $450 p/p. More specifically, the flights I purchased were leaving JFK at 11 a.m. the day before embarkation and 2:00 p.m. on the return.  Connecting flights and earlier times were significantly cheaper.  First, FBC changed the out bound flight to 7:00 a.m.  This is a problem since getting to JFK is always an issue and this adds $150 since Uber is a premium at 3:00 a.m. - Complained and they changed the flight to 8:30 out of Newark. Today they change the return flight to a connecting flight - now making this a 9 hour return flight and again adding an additional $100 Uber premium by the time we get out of the airport at 1:00 a.m.  If I had booked this flight originally it would have been $80 less p/p.  Now FBC wants $225 p/p to change the tickets. Really??  So I paid a premium for the direct flights that they were selling, they change them to the less expensive fairs and keep the difference...and want to charge $225 per ticket to change the tickets. Watch Out...

Are the original flights you still booked still available?  Or is this actually the airline consolidating flights?

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12 hours ago, esmoov said:

We booked Millennium this June out of St. Maarten. Decided to book through Flights By Celebrity (FBC).  Paid more for a direct flight to and from and also for leaving at reasonable times. Paid approximately $450 p/p. More specifically, the flights I purchased were leaving JFK at 11 a.m. the day before embarkation and 2:00 p.m. on the return.  Connecting flights and earlier times were significantly cheaper.  First, FBC changed the out bound flight to 7:00 a.m.  This is a problem since getting to JFK is always an issue and this adds $150 since Uber is a premium at 3:00 a.m. - Complained and they changed the flight to 8:30 out of Newark. Today they change the return flight to a connecting flight - now making this a 9 hour return flight and again adding an additional $100 Uber premium by the time we get out of the airport at 1:00 a.m.  If I had booked this flight originally it would have been $80 less p/p.  Now FBC wants $225 p/p to change the tickets. Really??  So I paid a premium for the direct flights that they were selling, they change them to the less expensive fairs and keep the difference...and want to charge $225 per ticket to change the tickets. Watch Out...

Yes that is a feature you need to watch.   For domestic flights, we can get direct anywhere in the US (and many major international cities) from DFW .  I had that happen once with Celebrity on a flight to MIA.  Paid for the direct, and they switched me to a connecting route (added 5 hours to flight time each leg).  As that was pre-plague, they actually accommodated and changed it.  So from now on, I book direct with airline the day before, but will still use FBC or Air2Sea for international.

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On 4/18/2021 at 8:40 PM, karl_nj said:

Are the original flights you still booked still available?  Or is this actually the airline consolidating flights?

The originally scheduled outbound flight no longer exists, the originally scheduled return flight still exists, FBC changed our flight to a connecting flight - which would have been and still is lower price.

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2 hours ago, esmoov said:

The originally scheduled outbound flight no longer exists, the originally scheduled return flight still exists, FBC changed our flight to a connecting flight - which would have been and still is lower price.

Strange.  Did they say why they moved you off of your return flight?  Does it have to do with the change you requested from JFK to EWR?

 

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On 4/18/2021 at 7:54 PM, esmoov said:

We booked Millennium this June out of St. Maarten. Decided to book through Flights By Celebrity (FBC).  Paid more for a direct flight to and from and also for leaving at reasonable times. Paid approximately $450 p/p. More specifically, the flights I purchased were leaving JFK at 11 a.m. the day before embarkation and 2:00 p.m. on the return.  Connecting flights and earlier times were significantly cheaper.  First, FBC changed the out bound flight to 7:00 a.m.  This is a problem since getting to JFK is always an issue and this adds $150 since Uber is a premium at 3:00 a.m. - Complained and they changed the flight to 8:30 out of Newark. Today they change the return flight to a connecting flight - now making this a 9 hour return flight and again adding an additional $100 Uber premium by the time we get out of the airport at 1:00 a.m.  If I had booked this flight originally it would have been $80 less p/p.  Now FBC wants $225 p/p to change the tickets. Really??  So I paid a premium for the direct flights that they were selling, they change them to the less expensive fairs and keep the difference...and want to charge $225 per ticket to change the tickets. Watch Out...

Not sure if it is part of the reason or not, but flying through EWR is going to be a mess this summer.  They're shutting down runway 4R-22L for most of the summer and part of the fall for maintenance/repaving work.  That runway handles almost half the traffic for the entire airport.  I'll post the information in a separate thread as it's probably relevant for others on the board (although cruising out of Bayonne this summer is still a potential no-go)...

 

https://simpleflying.com/newark-landing-runway-refurbishment/

 

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On 4/20/2021 at 9:24 AM, karl_nj said:

Strange.  Did they say why they moved you off of your return flight?  Does it have to do with the change you requested from JFK to EWR?

 

The answer they provided us was "you need to read the terms" and that FBC can change your flights at any point.  Which I get, however if they are offering flights at different price points they should adjust the price down if especially where the flight was changed from a direct to a connecting now making the flight 3x longer....

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On 4/20/2021 at 4:58 PM, USCG Teacher said:

Not sure if it is part of the reason or not, but flying through EWR is going to be a mess this summer.  They're shutting down runway 4R-22L for most of the summer and part of the fall for maintenance/repaving work.  That runway handles almost half the traffic for the entire airport.  I'll post the information in a separate thread as it's probably relevant for others on the board (although cruising out of Bayonne this summer is still a potential no-go)...

 

https://simpleflying.com/newark-landing-runway-refurbishment/

 

Thanks for this. Newark gets a bad rap, but I think that has to do with United.  They are a complete disaster in general but especially at EWR.  Both their departure and arrival curb pick-ups are routinely backed up onto the circular highway around the airport.  There is routinely a serpentine line on the after check-in just to get on the escalator to the actual gimungous serpentine line for security.  I refuse to fly with them unless they are the only flight that exists. I followed this rule and even then, United left me (chaperon on a high school trip) stranded in Nebraska with 12 high school kids - they lied and said that it was due weather where our plane was coming from.  Not a single cloud over the U.S. that day and flight tracker showed that our plane was sent to another airport. When confronted with this, they said that they did not have enough people booked on our flight to Newark and was rescheduled for Monday morning.  Flight to Hawaii sat on the tarmac for 4 hours, would not let us off = 15 hours on the plane. Got in the air and they ran out of food 3/4 of the was down the aisle. 

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