One-Way Cruise Airfare Prices

carolina_yankee · Jul 29, 2016

We're considering a repositioning cruise in a couple of years and wonder how to find affordable one-way airfare, especially to or from Europe.

I know that Royal Caribbean and Celebtrity offer very affordable airfare from Europe through their airfare booking engine. Does Disney have something similar? I imagine domestic would be doable since most airlines now have reasonable one-way domestic airfares, but international one-way seems brutal.

My specific concerns would be for a transatlantic or Panama Canal repositioning. We are in NJ and would use Newark but could do Philly.

Dirk

fardwarker · Jul 29, 2016

I've been on 4 Magic transatlantics and have 2 more coming up. The cost varies a lot. The first year we found one-way fare for $500, the next year it was $640. The next year I couldn't find anything under $1500,so I used Disney's $1000 package add-on with ground transportation. For 2017, I bought a Copenhagen to US round trip for $474 - I'll skip the return flight. It takes months to find the right air, and when I find my happy price I buy it and work on the rest of the planning. Disney doesn't usually offer the air add-on until later in the process, but I've only used that once, and I added it at 6 months out when I couldn't find anything myself.

Gilland18 · Jul 29, 2016

We are booked for our second transatlantic with Disney. We had Disney book our air both times and the prices were pretty competitive with others on our cruise meets. This time we booked over a year out and they booked us air (even though the flights haven;t been released). I would do my own for domestic flights.

PrincessShmoo · Jul 29, 2016

carolina_yankee said:
We're considering a repositioning cruise in a couple of years and wonder how to find affordable one-way airfare, especially to or from Europe.

I know that Royal Caribbean and Celebtrity offer very affordable airfare from Europe through their airfare booking engine. Does Disney have something similar? I imagine domestic would be doable since most airlines now have reasonable one-way domestic airfares, but international one-way seems brutal.

My specific concerns would be for a transatlantic or Panama Canal repositioning. We are in NJ and would use Newark but could do Philly.

Dirk

On our Panama Canal cruise we only had to fly back home from Orlando. Disney said they wouldn't book the flight as part of their package. That they only do it when it's a round trip, or has a "going to" and "coming back" leg to it.

On our 2 TransAtlantic cruises, we found the Disney price was just slightly higher than if we booked it ourselves. So we let DCL do it.

Usually, in my experience for the domestic flight to cruise it costs a lot more letting DCL do it, and the flights are not great, plus they don't pay for the booking until about 30 days out, so you can't do anything about seats until then.

RedSox68 · Jul 29, 2016

We have done the eastbound Panama Canal -- flying to Vegas for a few days and then driving to L.A., and have done the WBTA in 2007. All I can say is check every day. We got a tremendous price for our round-trip to England last year that turned out to be a glitch. I caught it on a Sunday morning and booked, and by the end of the day it had gone back up to it's original price. Keep an eye out, use Kayak and other airfare watching sites, and check check check. Prices can change in an instant and only be there for a few hours. We have to book one-way again from Newark/NYC to Barcelona as we did in 2007. We used Aer Lingus and got a tremendous deal in 2007 (we thought) -- $1,400 for three adults one-way total. Then two months after I booked it, it went on sale and dropped $400! So you just never know.

RedSox68 · Jul 29, 2016

PrincessShmoo said:
On our Panama Canal cruise we only had to fly back home from Orlando. Disney said they wouldn't book the flight as part of their package. That they only do it when it's a round trip, or has a "going to" and "coming back" leg to it.

On our 2 TransAtlantic cruises, we found the Disney price was just slightly higher than if we booked it ourselves. So we let DCL do it.

Usually, in my experience for the domestic flight to cruise it costs a lot more letting DCL do it, and the flights are not great, plus they don't pay for the booking until about 30 days out, so you can't do anything about seats until then.

Is this the same for international if you book with them? I'd be afraid I wouldn't get seats together.

PrincessShmoo · Jul 29, 2016

RedSox68 said:
Is this the same for international if you book with them? I'd be afraid I wouldn't get seats together.

My experience, yes, it's the same. I'll have to look it up, but this last time they may have done the flights at 45 days, not sure.

Don't know if DCL would do this, but, on other cruise lines where they book so close, I've been able to have them go ahead and do the booking (with the awareness of the flights we get being unchangeable) earlier so I could go into the reservation and select seats.

Only issue I had with seats on the last transatlantic was that American (the airline DCL uses for international flights) view window and aisle seats as "premium" and they cost more. The seats on the plane for our return flight (Dover to LA - 11 hours) configuration was 3-4-3 and we were assigned the two middle seats in the middle section. Yeah, like that's going to work. So we have climb over someone everytime we want to stretch our legs or use the toilet? I don't think so. I called the airline to move one of the seats to the other side (so we had an aisle seat).

ImprovGal · Jul 29, 2016

For Panama Canal, most domestic one ways are available in lower fare buckets. For Transatlantic itineraries, some carriers offer one way flights at lower fares -- Icelandair, Norwegian, Aer Lingus to name a few.

Some carriers let you redeem ff miles for one way tickets at half the round-trip cost. I did that for my first transatlantic in 2014. This year I sailed on EBTA and will also be on EBTA in Sept so I booked as one open jaw ticket for reasonable pricing (LHR-BOS/BOS-BCN).

Judyat · Jul 29, 2016

We are in NY on Long Island. When we did PC cruise in May we flew southwest non stop to Ft Lauderdale and took a shuttle to Miami. Very easy and super reasonable. From San Diego we flew jetblue to JFk non stop. Also reasonable. Jetblue and Southwest charge same price for one way or round trip. Many of the others charge more for one way. Also bags fly free on Southwest and no charge to change. I never feel locked in when we book Southwest. Charges on the others can be hefty.

RedSox68 · Aug 1, 2016

ImprovGal said:
For Panama Canal, most domestic one ways are available in lower fare buckets. For Transatlantic itineraries, some carriers offer one way flights at lower fares -- Icelandair, Norwegian, Aer Lingus to name a few.

Some carriers let you redeem ff miles for one way tickets at half the round-trip cost. I did that for my first transatlantic in 2014. This year I sailed on EBTA and will also be on EBTA in Sept so I booked as one open jaw ticket for reasonable pricing (LHR-BOS/BOS-BCN).

Good tip. Thanks.

arlopop · Aug 1, 2016

The one way airfare is hard. We wanted a long (read: repositioning) cruise, but the airfare cost getting to or back from Europe for 5 of us was rather prohibitive. On a whim I looked into costs on the EBPC to get back from MCO to San Diego (we live in Cali, so can drive to and from San Diego.) I was pleasantly surprised to find a non-stop back to SD for less than $900 total for all of us. That settled it. There are bargains to be had, but it takes some searching.

One-Way Cruise Airfare Prices

carolina_yankee

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fardwarker

Earning My Ears

Gilland18

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PrincessShmoo

DIS veteran

RedSox68

Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!

RedSox68

Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!

PrincessShmoo

DIS veteran

ImprovGal

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Judyat

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RedSox68

Retired 2021 -- All the Time to Travel Now!

arlopop

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