Gulp! Airfare Alaska

[momoftwins]

Yikes. We have a cruise booked for June 2020, and checked the airfare from Phl to Vancouver. I am seeing with Air Canada around $900 a person. Is Air Canada the best airline for this route? Also, we would have to fly in the day before. So, looking for hotel ideas.

Gosh, this is an expensive trip! Haven't even looked at excursions. I'll need CPR by the time I'm done

 

[FigmentSpark]

You can also look at WestJet, if you want a Canadian airline. They will likely be similar, though.

How about flying into Seattle and then go north, either rent a car or I think there's a train or even a short haul flight might be cheaper.

 

[stinkerella]

We flew to Seattle and did the rental car route. We stayed in Vancouver, but would have made sure to get a car rental place that returned at the port if we knew then what we learned from that trip.

 

[ironz]

A lot of people fly into Seattle if they find cheaper flights. For me, that would entail extra hassle (extra half day to drive Seattle to Vancouver, or train ride) so while I'm sure they save money, they don't save any time.
Keep checking-- look at Alaska and Westjet.
If you're the type of person to get a credit card for bonus miles/companion fare, Alaska offers a companion fare of $119 plus fees once a year. (That's what we used when we flew TX to Vancouver for our Alaska cruise a few years ago).

 

[dclpluto]

Just put some dummy dates in for June starts at around 450 a lot of flights in the 500 dollar range. Give us the exact dates so we can help you out.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Yikes. We have a cruise booked for June 2020, and checked the airfare from Phl to Vancouver. I am seeing with Air Canada around $900 a person. Is Air Canada the best airline for this route? Also, we would have to fly in the day before. So, looking for hotel ideas.

Gosh, this is an expensive trip! Haven't even looked at excursions. I'll need CPR by the time I'm done

Another tip - it may be a little early to get the best price. I found this online:
For flights to Canada, try to book your ticket three weeks to five months ahead of your departure. That's obviously a pretty serious range, so the site advises that the best time to buy is an average of 66 days from your travel date. The cheapest month to visit is October; the most expensive is July.

 

[Club Disney Chandler]

Yikes. We have a cruise booked for June 2020, and checked the airfare from Phl to Vancouver. I am seeing with Air Canada around $900 a person. Is Air Canada the best airline for this route? Also, we would have to fly in the day before. So, looking for hotel ideas.

Gosh, this is an expensive trip! Haven't even looked at excursions. I'll need CPR by the time I'm done

I wouldn’t buy this early. I just put in June dates from Phoenix and it’s way higher than what we paid in 2018. Right now it shows $700/person for the same flights we paid about $350/person for on Alaska Air. I believe I purchased our flights about 3 months before we flew. I study airfares quite a bit and always seem to find the best deals in the 2-3 month out timeframe. You can also put dates in on fare watcher to help guide you.

 

[iloveeeyore]

Also consider flying in 2 days early instead of one. My family of 4 saved some by flying thursday and staying in Vancouver 2 nights over flying friday and staying 1 night for a saturday cruise. This was for the 2018 season.

We stayed at Residence Inn by Marriott Vancouver Downtown. We loved it. Great location and price!

 

[WishUponAStarryNight]

I think you’ll be able to do much better than that. We flew Cathay Pacific nonstop to Vancouver out of Newark for $350pp earlier this year. Use apps like Hopper or Skyscanner. And if you can, arrive a couple days ahead- Vancouver is a great city. Enjoy your cruise!!

Edit: We flew out of JFK, not Newark. Not sure what I was thinking.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Prices will be higher this year than in 2018. Supply demand is messed up due to Max groundings. Even an airline without the Max is impacted because fewer seats means they can raise the price.

 

[ladyofthetramp]

It is an expensive trip! We are East coast- Boston. Our best bet and cheapest was Bos to Seattle with SouthWest. We took train to Vancouver, but you could do bus or car. The way back we scored a non-stop from Vancouver back to Boston for around $200/pp on Air Canada around this time of year. We did have to spend the night in Vancouver after the cruise as this flight was early morning. Day of disembarkation flights were all red eyes and even more expensive.

As for hotels in Vancouvver, they are not cheap, but there are bargins. We splurged for the Pacific Rim, but these boards are filled with suggestions for more economical options. Alaska is awesome! Enjoy your cruise!

 

[brianvdb]

Yikes. We have a cruise booked for June 2020, and checked the airfare from Phl to Vancouver. I am seeing with Air Canada around $900 a person. Is Air Canada the best airline for this route? Also, we would have to fly in the day before. So, looking for hotel ideas.

Gosh, this is an expensive trip! Haven't even looked at excursions. I'll need CPR by the time I'm done

You can fly Alaska Airlines from PHL to Seattle, and then from Seattle to Vancouver. Might be a bit less expensive.

I plugged in 6/13 - 6/21/20 and came up with an airfare of just over $800 round trip.

 

[otten]

Yikes. We have a cruise booked for June 2020, and checked the airfare from Phl to Vancouver. I am seeing with Air Canada around $900 a person. Is Air Canada the best airline for this route? Also, we would have to fly in the day before. So, looking for hotel ideas.

Gosh, this is an expensive trip! Haven't even looked at excursions. I'll need CPR by the time I'm done

You’re too early to be looking. Any of the airlines that fly into Vancouver are fine. If you want nonstop you’ll pay a lot more. There just aren’t a lot of nonstop options. If you have to connect I suggest trying to do so at an American airport so you don’t have to go through customs during a layover.

For hotels Pan Pacific is the favourite because it’s right there but it’s $$$. Any hotel downtown is a quick taxi to the port or walkable if you want to do that. The St Regis on dunsmuir is a pretty good value.

If you want to save money get a hotel near the Canada Line outside of downtown.

 

[momoftwins]

Thank you all for your advice!! Gives me some options to consider.

 

[bumbershoot]

Just about any hotel in downtown Vancouver is going to be good. Although it wouldn’t be fun with luggage, any of them are actually walkable.

I’d look at kayak to check prices for all airlines except southwest, to see what’s out there.

Flying into Seattle can cause two hotel nights before the cruise. There are two trains that go to Vancouver each day. One leaves earlier than you can get to even with a red eye flight (SeaTac being at minimum a half an hour away from the train station), and the other leaves after your cruise has departed.

The passenger train is slow and can be heavily delayed by freight trains ahead of you. I do not have the sort of nerves that could get on the train in the morning and fully expect to board the cruise that afternoon. So that means one night in Seattle and one night in Vancouver. While fun, it changes the finances vs just flying directly there.

 

[lilsonicfan]

I echo everyone's thoughts and suggest that you set google alerts and various app alerts, and be flexible with your dates. From the east coast you're almost certain to have to fly through Toronto or Montreal or perhaps a city like Chicago. It's so hard to fly nonstop to/from Vancouver. But Vancouver (where I live) is beautiful, spend a few extra days here, it's well worth it

 

[matt101980]

Not sure what area your traveling to PHL from but im in PA and I usually price out both PHL and Newark, Sometimes theres a large price difference between the 2.

 

[tvguy]

We flew WestJet into Vancouver and they had very good fares .

 

[melissajx3]

We flew American from Chicago to Vancouver. We stayed at the Pan Pacific, which is connected to the port, definitely recommend!

 

[JMommyof3]

It might be worth it to check airports around you as well. We live in Central California and our home airport was very expensive but we drove to LAX and saved a huge amount.