Claudia:
How right you are on airline flights! Often, we HAVE booked air through cruise lines IF the lines are of the type that really provide transfers in places strange to us, and/or provide "forced overnight" hotel accomodations. Sometimes, it doesn't cost any more that way, and sometimes it does.
But in any event, even if one books through the cruise line, it is very advisable that one have certain flights in mind, and request those from the cruise line.
We checked out the flight options for our Sept. 13 cruise on the Silver Cloud (Stockholm to London), and found that the best option for our arrival flight would be Oklahoma City to Newark -- and then a six hour layover in Newark before a flight to Stockholm. In our case, we have AMEX Platinum and the airline is Continental so we can use their first class lounge at Newark. This (for us) is better than a second connection here within the US. We wanted to book air through Silversea, because we checked prices and felt that the hotel they offered in Stockholm, plus the transfers in Stockholm and London were worth any additional cost. But, in our request to Silversea for booking air, our TA made it dependent on our getting certain flights -- including these. And, we got them.
Another example is that people who travel (like all of us) often know that some air carriers are unreliable. For this reason, we always avoid any air out of Oklahoma City involving the American Eagle to Dallas conecting to American there (or vice versa) because we know from experience that the American Eagle flights between Oklahoma City and Dallas are notorious for unreliability. On our last cruise on RSSC's PG, we requested instead that we be routed to LAX with United through Salt Lake City. And we got it.
On the times when we have decided (with full info on the options) to book through the cruise lines, we have always independently investigated routing and carrier options, and when options are there have requested our choice. So far, we've always received our choice. But cruise lines can't read our minds as to personal preferences or as to experienced lack of reliability of regional flights.
Bottom line, you've got to do your homework, whether you book air through the cruise lines or not.
Thanks,
Richard
