Well, like I always say I hate air travel and airlines. And yesterday only reinforced my theory.
After work I went in looking at the option for reserving our seats on our Air Transat Flight to Rome.
As I scanned the seat map, comparing seats with flight guru seat recommendations I noticed something was off.
At the bottom of the page it showed the flight with one stop in London. Hmmm our flight is suppose to be direct to Rome from Vancouver. After further investigation and checking travel search sites I see our flight to Rome has changed. It now leaves earlier from Vancouver and arrives in Rome an hour later. This makes our 2.5 hour layover in Rome with enough time to get to our 1420 flight just enough, but now it is down to a 1 and a half hour layover and that is NOT enough time to clear customs, get bags and get to new flight.
So I get on the phone with the agency we booked our flights with - Kiwi - and they are not aware of the change and will look into it.
After hanging up with them I see the next flight to Genoa means an added 6 hour layover in Rome - 8 hours in total. That will not work. We would never have booked that flight if it was like that originally.
Oddly Air Transat's site shows direct flight to Rome every Friday - but not that day! It flies to London then Rome. Just our luck.
This morning we get an email from Kiwi (our agency) with the offer to change to the late flight to Genoa (8 hour layover) at no cost.
I call them up and say that we can't do that option and they say they can cancel the entire thing at no cost due to the drastic change. I know it is not their fault and accept that offer.
One thing I highly recommend to everyone - and it has saved our butts. Is check your flights regularly for changes because often your travel agent doesn't even know about it until you alert them.
Now I have to start again looking at options for flights to Genoa. So stay tune.
As many of you know I am not a huge fan of flying. Not that I am nervous or afraid - it is just BORING and not comfortable. Remember my blog Joys of Flying. Well not much has changed.
This time this are a little different. We are wanting to see a dear friend - Federico Castro and his partner Andrea who live in Genoa. Some of you may know Federico he use to be a Captain Circle Host with Princess.
We first met Federico on the Caribbean three years ago where we started a great friendship. Then last year the relationship really developed when we were on the Royal for a month.
You know how you meet someone and you instantly connect and know you will be friends forever, well that is how we felt.
We were saddened to hear he was leaving Princess but happy he was settling down and was very happy with Andrea in Genoa.
Okay sorry back to the theme of the blog.
So we had to look at flights to Genoa. So many options but what was the most economical and the most convenient.
Thankfully the two charter companies are still flying to Europe in early October. This helped with options and keeping the price down.
The best option was either a flight to London (with Westjet) then flight to Rome, then to Genoa. Or a flight to Rome direct from Vancouver (with Air Transat) then flight to Genoa. The second option was the best but it only flew out on a Friday afternoon.
So after some discussion we ended up on the second option with Air Transat.
This will be the longest single flight we have ever taken - 11 hours and 15 min!
We searched and booked thru my newest favorite booking site Kiwi.com for a price of $500 US each.
One issue we encountered was when we searched for one person we had no problems, but when we increased the search to two people they said it wasn't available. We thought that can't be. So we did a little research. We opened an incognito window and searched on two different tabs for the same flight and we had no problem getting it at the great price. So we ended up booking two separate bookings, one for each of us. Which should not be a problem as we can easily book seats close to each other. And even if we can't, the money saved makes is well worth it.
So now we fly out on a Friday at 15:40 and arrive in Genoa on Saturday at 14:20 (almost 24 hours later, but there is a 9 hour time change).
For the flight home we know this routing the best of all since we often fly to and from Fort Lauderdale.
We did toss around the idea of booking first class tickets for $710 (Canadian) each. I was really wanting to and Bernie was hesitant. After suggesting this could be my birthday present he said sure! But as I pondered it and the cost (see what I think about when I am driving the bus) I really couldn't go forward with it and ended up booking economy seats with American Airlines.
The cost of economy seats was $230 (Canadian) each. So for almost $1,000 we can fly economy and use that $1,000 somewhere else. Somehow I don't think I will have a problem spending that somewhere on this trip.
