Flight booked through cruise line

[Leopard]

Has anyone booked round trip flight cruise through the cruise line? If so, costs compared to booking separately, any pluses that make the booking worth it?leaving from Ft Lauderdale Fl. Liberty of the Seas in April 2024. Thanks!

[Ampurp85]

If you are talking Air2Sea.

The only true plus is the cost of the flight is due at the same time as final payment. They want to get you there before the ship departs and if you miss it due to flight delays, they will get you on by the next port. There is a lot of cons if you are flying domestically. They won't allow for departure flights until after noon, so you might have anywhere from 4-10hrs before you can fly home. Sometimes you cannot assign your seats. Also some flights aren't shown. 

[Lovetocruise2002]

I use Air2Sea almost always now since we almost missed our sailing in March 2022. I use them for domestic and international flights.

I have a love/hate relationship with Air2Sea.

Like @Ampurp85 mentioned, a major pro is assured arrival and "book now, pay at final payment". Another major pro is the ability to re-price if the airfare goes down before final payment. If you book direct with an airlines, it's hard to do this unless you book refundable air and we all know that can get pricey. I have actually saved quite a bit over the last few years re-pricing my flights.

Some of the cons is what @Ampurp85 already mentioned. The flight times can be restricted depending on the port. For example, flying home from a cruise that docks in FLL, they will allow flights before noon, but if you dock in Miami and want to fly home from FLL, they will make you choose a flight after 12pm. Same for MCO. If you dock in Port Canaveral, they also will not let you pick a flight before noon.

If you fly Delta, you will have no trouble picking your seats once you book. However, some airlines will not allow you to pick seats until you pay for your flight in full.

The 3rd con that I can think of is that you cannot use airline vouchers, points, certificates etc. towards your Air2Sea booking.

The last major con, and the reason I now have a love/hate relationship with Air2Sea is that when you book your air through them, they now become your "TA" for the air portion. When things go south (it did for us a few months ago when our flight to Wonder got cancelled), any refunds from the airlines will go directly back to Air2Sea. For almost 3 months now, I have called, and chased Air2Sea down repeatedly for portions of my refund from Delta. Delta refunded us in 3 portions. Two were for the cancelled tickets, one portion was for miscellaneous costs because they delayed us before they cancelled us. Anyway, almost 3 months later, Air2Sea has yet to refund me back my 3rd portion. They are able to tell me how much they owe me, but no refund has shown up yet.

Bottom line is that you have to weigh out the pros vs. cons. For me, while I love/hate them, I will continue to use them for domestic and international flight because the peace of mind of assured arrival and the ability to re-price trumps the other annoyances. I still remember the panic and the awful feeling back in March 2022 when I truly wasn't sure if I was going to make it Miami and that drives me to call Air2Sea each time. Make sure you call them. Their online site never shows all the options.

 

[Lovetocruise2002]

Oh, one last thing. The cost of Air2Sea is very comparable (in my experiences) with the airline. It is always (again, in my experiences) $9 more per person. For example, if Delta is charging $400pp for a flight from DTW-FLL, then Air2Sea will come in at $409pp for the same flight.

[teddy]

We've used Air2Sea most recently for our flights to/from Italy next week(!!).  

Because the cruise starts in Ravenna and ends in Civitavecchia, we had to book one way tickets.  Air2Sea was cheaper than anything we found through the airlines (for Economy Class at least). 

Air2Sea had no problems with us arriving three days early, and we even changed our flights from arriving in Bologna to arriving in Venice a week after initially booking.  We did end up paying right after we changed our arrival airport to Venice so we could pick our seats.  We are flying TAP Air to Italy and Lufthansa back to the US, and neither of them would allow us to choose seats until paid in full.  Since we have a decent annual travel insurance plan, we weren't worried about having to change or cancel, and we were pretty sure we wouldn't find flights any cheaper (and we haven't).  By paying in full immediately, we were able to chose (and pay for) seats that have more leg room, so despite flying in Economy, we have decent seats.

I agree with @Lovetocruise2002 that calling is the way to interact with Air2Sea.  We had so many more choices when talking to the representative than showed on the website.

We view Air2Sea as one of the many options to explore when booking flights for a cruise.  Sometimes they've been cheaper, sometimes not so much.  For this Italy trip, they happened to be the cheapest by a long shot so we used them for that reason.

[Jax]

I just booked Air2Sea for the first time for our upcoming European Cruise from Southhampton this summer. We almost exclusively fly WestJet and have an annual companion voucher; for $399 one of us can fly to Southhampton in premium economy. I thought the voucher would be the cheapest way to go but surprisingly it was not.  I priced out premium economy from YYC to LHR with Air2Sea with both Air Canada and WJ and it was considerably cheaper on AC than if I booked direct with AC or WJ with the companion voucher. So for the first time in many years we will be flying AC. It’ll be a good way to compare premium economy services between the two. I was reluctant to try Air2Sea because of the ability to secure seats before final payment and ticket issuance. But the agent told me that with premium economy and business class, seats can be requested and secured. If I am being totally honest I didn’t really believe them so I had them complete the booking along with seat preferences and I immediately signed into AC and saw our seat assignments! I still don’t believe it and will be obsessively checking to make sure AC doesn’t drop our seats. Because this trip is still up in the air Air2Sea made the most sense for us.  I was happy that the price worked out favourably too.  

[Jax]

On 10/10/2023 at 7:31 AM, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Make sure you call them. Their online site never shows all the options.

Agreed, in my case the website showed no non stop return flights even though they existed.