Air2sea questions

[Nathan_O]

Was thinking about booking flights through Royal's Air2Sea option for our cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale and had a few Questions:

How soon do we get our itinerary for the airline, so that we can move seats if necessary and prepay luggage? ( we would most likely book nowpay later)?

 

Is Shuttle transfer included or extra? When/how do you add that ?

 

[Pattycruise]

I'd love to know about booking a one way flight.  Doesn't appear to be an option on Air2Sea online. 

Nathan_O shuttle transfer is not included.  I can't answer your other questions as I've not used air2Sea in ages.

 

[steverk]

You'll get your itinerary as soon as you book with air2sea. Generally,  but not always,  they can assign the seat at that time. 

Some airlines will wait until the ticket is actually purchased, which happens 30 to 90 days out.

However, and this is a big one, since the pandemic,  the flights have changed frequently. Therefore,  I wouldn't get real excited about seats and luggage until a month or so before sailing 

[tjcruisers]

I did it for our cruise in a few weeks. The flights did change a few times and we had to do some juggling. I didn't wait for our seat to be assigned by the airline, but rather paid to select our seats when everything was straightened out, only ended up being about $30 (concerned with overbooking could we get bumped otherwise). I don't recall there being an option for prepaying luggage. Doen shuttle a few times, one time booked it on the ship, this time our TA did it. I didn't see it on the cruise planner itself, might have to call Royal

One thing is you have to use the same airline going both ways. In our case we fly into Newark, but back out of Houston, which didn't make it ideal

 

[Zacharius]

14 minutes ago, tjcruisers said:

I didn't wait for our seat to be assigned by the airline, but rather paid to select our seats when everything was straightened out, only ended up being about $30 (concerned with overbooking could we get bumped otherwise).

In the case of overbooking, an airline doesn't really consider if you have a seat allocated (purchased or otherwise) or not. They're going to look at things like airline/alliance status as well as fare codes. The fact that many cruiseline procured flights are on special, non-published fares (read: often low priced) is likely to put you at a little higher risk of being bumped than not having a seat allocation would. 

[smokeybandit]

I couldn't really recommend Air2Sea for a domestic flight. Just seems more hassle than it's worth.

[NJCruisers]

On 10/11/2022 at 11:18 PM, Pattycruise said:

I'd love to know about booking a one way flight.  Doesn't appear to be an option on Air2Sea online. 

Nathan_O shuttle transfer is not included.  I can't answer your other questions as I've not used air2Sea in ages.

 

We have 2 one way flights booked from Air2Sea. From New Jersey to Vancouver and from Alaska to New Jersey. 

[baltodave]

First, for US domestic cruises, I have never used Air2Sea since I have so many SWA points (and use SWA to go to Florida and Texas).  We recently used Air2Sea for a cruise that started in Athens Greece and ended in Ravenna Italy.  They booked us on American to Athens (a few days before our cruise) and British home from Venice the day after our cruise.  In some cases, they can get seats for you or you can do it yourself once you get the record locator numbers.  In other cases (e.g. British) you have to prepay for the right to select seats ahead of time.  

We have an Alaska cruise next June and for that one, we used Air2Sea (they booked us on Air Canada to Vancouver and American home from Anchorage).  In that case we were able to get seats on American as soon as we got the record locator.  However, we couldn't get seats on Air Canada  until the flights were paid for.   For this itinerary, we won't be able to pay for luggage until we check in. 

I don't believe Shuttles are included. 

One more thing, watch your email for flight changes.  For our Greek cruise, we had to deal with 2 cancellations and were not happy with how they rebooked us.  I looked into better options and (working with Air2Sea) was able to make the changes I wanted.

That being said, make sure you have the phone number to call during the day-of-travel so they can help you if you have any missed connections, etc.