Booking airfare through RCL

[Biaggio]

Doing a transatlantic in April and looking at one way air tickets from Barcelona to The US. Business class tickets are at the low end and temped to book. Only concern I have is what if RCL changes the cruise dates? So my question is if I book the air through RCL, am I protected if the date changes?

A few years ago the transatlantic cruise moved the sail dates by 4 days, and I had to change the air tickets and pay a penalty. 
 

Thanks

[wordell1]

Yes, it's one of the benefits of using NextCruise. 

[Biaggio]

3 minutes ago, wordell1 said:

Yes, it's one of the benefits of using NextCruise. 

Do you need to book air at the time of cruise booking?

Airfare cost competitive?

[Lovetocruise2002]

28 minutes ago, Biaggio said:

Do you need to book air at the time of cruise booking?

Airfare cost competitive?

No, you can add air after you book your cruise.

I have found Air2Sea pricing very comparable. It's usually higher by about $9-$10. For our flights to the UK last summer, it was actually lower than Delta direct. The best part about Air2Sea you have the ability to re-price right up until final payment.

[teddy]

We used Air2Sea for flights to/from Italy this coming October.

We are flying into Venice for the cruise and flying back to the States from Rome after the cruise.  The total cost of all our flights through Air2Sea was cheaper than just Rome to Boston was when we looked at booking through airlines.

We’re flying in Economy. I have no idea about the other classes  

 

[smokeybandit]

51 minutes ago, wordell1 said:

Yes, it's one of the benefits of using NextCruise. 

You mean Air2Sea

[Biaggio]

Thanks, I’ll give them a call. 

[Linda R]

1 hour ago, Biaggio said:

Doing a transatlantic in April and looking at one way air tickets from Barcelona to The US. Business class tickets are at the low end and temped to book. Only concern I have is what if RCL changes the cruise dates? So my question is if I book the air through RCL, am I protected if the date changes?

A few years ago the transatlantic cruise moved the sail dates by 4 days, and I had to change the air tickets and pay a penalty. 
 

Thanks

We always  do a transatlantic cruise in the spring.  For many years.  Never had the dates changed on us, but it could happen.  We are also taking transatlantic cruise this next spring and flying back to states from Barcelona.  We might be on same cruise.   I usually use airline points for return flights and have got them for very cheap the past 2 years.  Like 40,000  to 70,000 points on Delta, and that is back to Montana.   Not sure what we are doing for our flights home from Barcelona yet.  I will be looking into it soon, and can check air2sea also.  

[Katiemay0101]

Word of caution, yes, it will protect you if RC changes the cruise date. What they don't do is help you when you miss a connecting flight because your original flight ran late, or when you're standing in the airport and your flight gets cancelled. I flew to Heathrow with my son in June. Out of the 5 flights (round trip), 4 of them were either late or cancelled. When I called Air2Sea asking for help I was told to stand in line at the airport service desk and do it myself (not those words but you get my drift). I was offered no help, no advice and twice I opted to have them call me back and never received a call-back. So yeah, you get the protection of being able to move your flight but nothing else from their supposed emergency team. Oh, and to add to the headache, when you request a refund from the airline for anything that goes wrong (cancelled flight, delays, lost luggage) the refund then filters back through Air2Sea, extending the time it takes to receive the money back. It was a nightmare and I will never use Air2Sea again because I still can't figure out what good they are. I realize air travel is not what it used to be but when you use a program that says they will help and they essentially abandon you in a foreign country it doesn't exactly leave a good impression. 

Kate

[steverk]

16 minutes ago, Katiemay said:

Word of caution, yes, it will protect you if RC changes the cruise date. What they don't do is help you when you miss a connecting flight because your original flight ran late, or when you're standing in the airport and your flight gets cancelled. I flew to Heathrow with my son in June. Out of the 5 flights (round trip), 4 of them were either late or cancelled. When I called Air2Sea asking for help I was told to stand in line at the airport service desk and do it myself (not those words but you get my drift). I was offered no help, no advice and twice I opted to have them call me back and never received a call-back. So yeah, you get the protection of being able to move your flight but nothing else from their supposed emergency team. Oh, and to add to the headache, when you request a refund from the airline for anything that goes wrong (cancelled flight, delays, lost luggage) the refund then filters back through Air2Sea, extending the time it takes to receive the money back. It was a nightmare and I will never use Air2Sea again because I still can't figure out what good they are. I realize air travel is not what it used to be but when you use a program that says they will help and they essentially abandon you in a foreign country it doesn't exactly leave a good impression. 

Kate

That's the exact opposite of my experience. 

I had a connection in Miami that was cancelled after spending 4 hours on the plane.  American Airlines said the next flight I could get was on Wednesday, and since there were no hotels available, I should just sleep in the airport. Since this was currently a Sunday, that was a huge problem. I called Air2Sea and they put me up in a hotel at their expense and got me on the first flight out in the morning.

On another cruise, my son forgot his COVID card and realized it when he got the airport. There was no way to get it before the flight departed.  There were no other published flights between Birmingham AL and San Juan PR before the ship departs. Air2Sea pieced together a flight the next morning that arrived in San Juan 2 hours before the ship departed.  It was a horrible flight, but it worked and saved his cruise.

[Biaggio]

So I called air2sea and the agent spoke with such a heavy accent I couldn’t understand half of what she said. I’ll book directly with the airline and pay for a refundable ticket. 

[smokeybandit]

 

So I called air2sea and the agent spoke with such a heavy accent I couldn’t understand half of what she said. I’ll book directly with the airline and pay for a refundable ticket. 

Booking through Air2Sea is a refundable ticket before final payment.

My issue with calling Air2Sea isn't the accents, but the fact the call quality is usually so bad you have to navigate through static to focus on the accents.

[Lovetocruise2002]

 

Booking through Air2Sea is a refundable ticket before final payment.

My issue with calling Air2Sea isn't the accents, but the fact the call quality is usually so bad you have to navigate through static to focus on the accents.

This happens to me quite often when I call them. If you tell them that you cannot hear them due to static, they do something on their end and it comes back clear. 

[Maggie M]

We booked through Air2Sea and they gave us only 30 minutes to catch our connection in Charlotte. I didn't catch this until after I hung up and that is not enough time in Charlotte especially when traveling with a toddler in tow. I called back to reschedule and they said I had to cancel and re-book but that I would be refunded 100% without a change fee so that was nice; only caveat was that it would/could take up to 2 full billing cycles to see the credit. I then saw that I had a travel credit with American Airlines versus a refund from Royal when logging into the American app. I called American who told me to call Air2Sea who told me to call American. It was a back and forth for hours before I finally got a supervisor who said they would be requesting the refund to my credit card versus the corporate card that was used to purchase the ticket via Air2Sea. There may be some benefits of Air2Sea but if something like the connection time needs to be changed/cancelled, I found that going through them was more of a headache than booking directly with the airlines. When I did get refunded (albeit about a week or 2 later v. 2 months) - I found that prices went down and I booked directly through the airline versus a third party. Just my experiences. Best of luck to you!

[Biaggio]

Thanks Maggie. Booked direct through the airline to avoid problems like you experienced. 

[smokeybandit]

You shouldn't have had to get a refund from a flight on Air2Sea unless you opted to pay up front.

[Maggie M]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:28 AM, CableKC said:

Maggie M, just following up on this.   What time did you arrive at the Cruise Terminal and how did it go?

Was it too early?

If so, how long did you wait at the Terminal itself?

I finally decidedon which cruise I will go on and am starting to look at airfare.   I'm hoping that an arrival time of 930am to 10am isn't too early.   One of the things I wanted to do was to be able to arrive early and walk around and enjoy the ship before it sails.  You know, get my money's worth.

We arrived just about 10-15 minutes before our scheduled boarding time and waited in line until it was our turn to board since we didn't have a suite for that cruise. The line moved fairly quickly and within about 20 minutes we were on the ship - they started checking us in about 10 minutes before our boarding time so the line was already moving when we got there! We try to always get the early arrival times too!