will they ADD international flights as time goes by?
We are (hopefully) going on a Xmas Market River Cruise (Nov. 29) and staying another week In Germany 2021 -- we go over there about every other year and we are used to booking our own MultiCity Flights.
6 of us will be going. 4 from Winston Salem NC, 2 from Savannah GA = hopefully meeting up at the Atlanta Airport & all flying over to Vienna together. We will be returning home from Munich to Atlanta.
We like the Delta Comfort + seats and we know there are only 8 rows of 2 seaters, and we need 3 of those rows. We typically don't book so early, but with us wanting 3 of the 8 rows, we are considering booking on opening day for us - which is 2 weeks away.
We are worried about booking SO early - as many times our flights get changed and we end up with different layovers and sometimes even different seats.
As time goes by, do they tend to add more flights? Or is what is available in 2 weeks all there will be? I know Covid has changed things, and I'm not asking for a prediction of what will be different - just wondering if they add flights as time goes by or if the flights are set? I know the layovers, etc change.
Thanks so much.
Comments
Most years I'd say the chance of flights being added is low but 2021 could be different. Delta was later than normal posting their schedule this year. I'd go ahead and book using Tauck air dept so you don't have to commit money yet. Now that they can book Delta Comfort it's easy to do. When I booked ours the agent said if we saw a better itinerary later they could work with us to adjust.
As for last minute changes, it can happen no matter what. We had a flight canceled 2 weeks before a tour start. By then there were few options for available flights and the worst economy seats. It was the last flight of the day from SLC to Albu. Ended up keeping our flight from Heathrow to SLC and staying over night in a hotel.
It's all a gamble.
One other thing to consider in booking is that often a Delta flight might actually be Air France or KLM who use different plane configurations. The flight we are on to Europe this year is KLM and the comfort section is 3/4/3 vs Delta's usual 2/4/2. We booked business class so it didn't matter but I ended up discouraging family members from that flight because I didn't think they'd pay the extra for BC or enjoy the comfort seats much.
If you're on the phone with the Tauck agent, have them give you the plane model number so you can pull it up on your computer while you're deciding.
This is all new territory so who knows what will happen, assuming we get COVID under control by summer. If the airlines keep their liberal change policy, you could change to different (better) flights with no fee, but right now things are still fairly limited. One recent news report from an industry analyst, said it could take until 2024 before the airlines are fully back to their pre-COVID capacity.
It will be almost 4 months from now before we can book flights if our March 2021 J&E gets canceled and we re-book for March 2022, so, just to get an idea I used constructive flight dates in Nov 2021. We usually fly Delta but when I searched, there were no flights- I couldn't get from here to there and back with any combination of Delta/KLM/AF!
AlanS (or anyone else) - Any opinion on equipment changes?
I just started looking at flights from Denver to Cairo for Nov 2021. British Air has always flown 747s between DEN and LHR, but now they're flying 777s. Their 747s are very run down and out of date, and I wouldn't consider taking one (again). However, I'd do a 777. Any thoughts about them switching back as traffic picks up?
You never know what the airlines will do.
For the last two years Delta spent millions converting all the seats in the business cabins of all 18 of their 777’s to suites. Then earlier this year when all the conversions were done, they decided to retire all of them due to poor fuel economy. They have no plans to put any back in service. The 747 is considerably older and much less efficient than the 777, so you can make your guess about what BA will do. Google it and you may be able to find something about BA's plan, but once you can travel again, I doubt you'll fly a BA 747.
Here is the first response to my quick query from a pre-COVID 2017 article:
So the writing was on the wall three years ago.
Then there is this updated info from July 2020:
What I find bizarre, even before this year and the Covid crisis, is that even when we live in a major city on the east coast, it is so darned difficult to find flights that don’t mean city and plane changes to get to some of the start and end locations of certain Tauck European tours. Our tour of Croatia to Venice that was cancelled this past July, had a terrible flight itinerary. I was almost glad it was canceled in the hope that if we do it in the future there are better flight options. We didn’t book business class either as we thought it was too much money and not really long haul. We don’t qualify for the stimulus money like some of those on the forum who already got their’s and always fly business class. That’s bizarre too.
Thanks for your comments, Alan. I assumed it was a temporary change and didn't think to google BA's plans for the 747s. Just did a little research on the BA 777 biz class and reviews aren't good. It's a 2-4-s config, So if prices are comparable, will probably go with UA or LH. If I do that, the next question to reconcile - is it worth saving an extra 3 hours of layover in FRA or MUC to avoid LH's fake biz class for the second leg (4 hours to Cairo from Germany).
British - When Tauck tours have different start/end cities, which is often the case, it usually is more difficult to get good and affordable tickets. Especially when either the start or end city is much less an air travel hub than the other city. When we did the Venice and Dalmatian Coast Small Ship tour it started and ended in Venice. As such we were able to get roundtrip Philadelphia/Venice business class tickets that were good and affordable.
Everyone's definition of good and affordable is different. Here's an attempt at my definition:
"Affordable" - less than $3.5K per person. When higher we start looking at Economy Comfort. This is what we had to do for the K&T tour. Cheapest business class we could find was about $6K per person.
Good - this is much more difficult to quantify but some of the variables that come into play are:
a) Not an excessive number of total travel hours. Living in Tucson, this has to be a higher number than someone that initiates travel in a major hub with lots of good options. In general, my target is <30 hours total travel time. Not always possible to achieve.
b) Try to avoid Heathrow, unless the UK is the destination
c) Try to book on major airlines that get decent reviews from the airline rating websites
d) Try to minimize number of stops
e) All of the above being equal, book on 1) American or 2) Delta. I have the most miles on American. That said we have booked flights to tours with Turkish Airlines, Japan Airlines, and KLM because of the Affordable aspect. We have booked on United as well, but I try to avoid them because of a pet peeve with respect to their booking system. When looking for flights on United you indicate you want business class but a great majority of the time you will find an economy leg in the itinerary that they provide in your search, especially for domestic legs. Other airlines (American or Delta) when you do similar searches for business class they return the domestic legs as first class legs.
Some years ago, when we started flying business, I researched the BA seating- some will disagree, but I (and a fair number of aviation bloggers) think the business class seats BA had in the Airbus A380, and most Boeing planes was terrible- forward and reverse seating, most required stepping over someones feet/legs to get to an aisle. One journalist wondered who would ever design such a seat and why!?!?!? We've gotten picky in recent years, so I always look for planes where every business seat has aisle access. We usually pick the center section of 1 - 2 - 1 seating, though since many of our flights are night flights and it is hard to have a conversation anyway, we are going to try window seats, one sitting in front of the other, for our next flight(s).
Continental European Business class is kind of a joke- same size (narrow) seats as coach, just at the front of the plane. In planes with 3 - 3 seating, they block off the center seat on each side.
It sounds like you are headed to J&E or Egypt Treasures of the Nile. You might want to investigate Turkish Air. If our J&E miraculously goes this March, we will fly Turkish and if it is cancelled maybe in 2022. Turkish currently flies out of Ohare and JFK, but may increase the number of US departure cities- before COVID, I believe they also flew out of Atlanta, Dulles and maybe Toronto. Depending on the flight/origination, you could be on a 777 with 2 - 3 - 2 seating or a 787-9 Dreamliner with 1 - 2 - 1 seating in business- I will choose departure city and flights to be on the 787. The best thing is the flights have only one stop in Istanbul which I've heard is a fabulous airport. They avoid LHR, AMS, CDG, etc. Also, the layovers come near the end of the flight going over and near the start coming back so don't break up the long legs. The connecting flights for us are relatively short- 1+15 to Amman, Jordan (on an A330 widebody!) going over and 3+25 from Cairo on the return. We'll have a long layover in Istanbul going over, but that will give us time to see the airport and grab a bite to eat if we need one. Like most US and European carriers, the flight leaves Cairo at around 2:45 am.
We will still need to get to and from their US gateway airport but we'll do that on Delta with miles and hopefully by 2022 we'll be able to tighten up the schedule a bit and fly to/from ATL or JFK for both legs. It may take a bit to understand my presentation format but this would have been our flights to J&E this March- the first one just has the Turkish legs, the second, our whole itinerary:
I will second Alan's comment on Turkish. We had great business class seats (and cheap - a special I think) from Toronto to Istanbul to Tel Aviv and then Amman to Istanbul to Toronto. The service was great and for any Istanbul layover the business class lounge is outstanding. I use a similar technique as Alan, using miles for domestic flights to get to business class departure cities (except I use American miles). In addition, I traded saving $1000 per person for an additional 7 hour layover in Istanbul on the way home. With the outstanding business class lounge in Istanbul it was a no brainer for me.
I'm booked on the Egypt:Jewels of the Nile trip. Was already in Jordan on the Israel/Jordan trip Nov 2019 (I was about to say last year...) While I would definitely go back to Israel, I wouldn't repeat Jordan. On that trip I flew Air Canada to TLV (one stop in Toronto) and LH/UA home from AMM (one stop in FRA). My top priority in booking flights is avoiding more than one stop and have been successful in that goal on all 7 of my Tauck trips. I feel the risk of something going wrong (lost luggage, missing a connection, etc.) increases exponentially with each stop.
As of now BA is significantly cheaper than UA ($3K vs $4.8K), but I have plenty of time to book. I believe we discussed before the pros and cons of booking early and this time, I'm definitely going to wait a while before booking, given all the uncertainty in travel these days. I have enough AA miles to use for BA, but they add absurd surcharges for flights through Europe ($700+ last I checked), so I'll probably save those miles for a trip to a different continent.
I don't remember if I included all the details in an old post, but for our Blue Danube flights three years ago we had two "flat-out sprint" connections- the first one in Boston. The VP was flying in the area so they cleared out/delayed all air traffic- I never heard of such a thing, it was just the VP!!- then to add insult to injury our plane had to wait for a gate! What a sprint! Then, coming home we only had a 1 hr layover in Amsterdam to start with- way too short by most reckonings. Our flight from Budapest was late getting off and late arriving in Amsterdam, so that delay and distant gate locations shortened our already minimal connection time to something not possible, but again, another flat out sprint, saved us. They closed the door right behind us and started push back before we were even seated! We were extremely lucky! So yes, you can make a connection in Amsterdam that is less than an hour, but I highly recommend that you avoid attempting it at all costs.
But, getting back to the primary topic, booking air in the upcoming year, other than thru Tauck, may be a crap shoot. In about two weeks I'm going to try to book our flights for XMAS Mkts on the Rhine 2021 myself anyway.
Our cruise travels northbound and after the cruise we are planning to take a train from Dusseldorf (the cruise ends there now instead of in Cologne) to Hamburg to see Miniatur Wunderland before heading home. Has anyone seen that place?
We have a trip to Ireland in June. Normally, I would have booked the flights long ago. I'm waiting until we get a vaccine appointment and I see some changes to entry requirements for the UK and Ireland (i.e. no quarantine for people with proof of the vaccine). I'll probably also call Tauck before I book to make sure the tour is going. The airlines are waiving change fees, but still have time limits on when you can use the credit if you have to cancel. Fingers crossed.
Per Flight Connections there are Turkish Airlines flights from the following cities in the US and Canada to Istanbul
I agree with the positive comments about Turkish Air, which I flew home (Boston). from Amman in March. They fly non-stop from BOS to IST. A couple of weeks ago, they notified me that they had cancelled my outbound flights from BOS to TLV that I had booked for this coming March, and today I received word that my Amex account had been credited with the full amount of my outbound and inbound tickets. No fuss, no muss. A far cry from dealing with Lufthansa!
In normal (non-COVID) times, I assume!