Question for those on the Mediterranean Cruise About This Page:

[wishes]

To those of you lucky ones who were on the Mediterranean Cruise this past summer, what airline did you fly and where did you stay in Barcelona? And if you don't mind me asking, how much approx. was the flight? I ask because we are sending my parents on a Med. cruise in mid-May with a similar itinerary to DCL and we need to get them to Barcelona to embark.

Thanks!

[chezp]

We were on the Med cruise, but I doubt I'll be able to help, as we were flying in from London. We took British Airways. I know others took British Airways into London Heathrow and then took a connecting flight over to Barcelona. If you do it this way, be sure to allow lots of connecting time between your flights, as Heathrow is a huge airport, with the fifth terminal opening shortly....

[Dave Marx]

There are only a few airlines that fly direct from the US to Barcelona (BCN). We took US Air on our research cruise on Royal Caribbean. US Air flies out of Philadelphia. Another possibility is Iberia, which has several US gateway cities, JFK among them. When we were comparison shopping, Iberia tended to have the best fares, but it wasn't always the case. My parents flew to Milan out of New York on American or Continental (I forget which - they had lots of frequent flier miles to cash in), with a connection to BCN. It did work out for them, but that was probably due to the frequent flier program.

In general, though, it'll be cheaper to take a domestic (US) connecting flight to a US gateway city (like Philadelphia, NY, Miami, etc.) to catch a direct flight from there to BCN, rather than fly to somewhere else in Europe and connect from there to Barcelona - segment taxes and fees in Europe are charged in Euros - they are higher than equivialent US fees to begin with, and you get whacked by the exchange rate. Typically, taxes and fees added $125 or more to the cost of each connecting leg in Europe when we were pricing things. So, while we were able to find (apparently) affordable fares from various cities into London, Dublin (Aer Lingus had a pretty nice sale going for a while), and others, the flight costs from there to BCN tended to wipe out the savings.

Most of the time we were pricing, the cheapest round trip air fares from Detroit came in at the $900 range after all taxes and fees were added. We tried pricing direct flights from Chicago and the East Coast gateway airports without including the connecting flight from Detroit (assuming we might drive if the savings were worthwhile), and found little or no savings.

So, we priced airfare through the cruise line, and due to some specials available at the time, it was a touch cheaper to use the cruise line air package (not only that, but instead of just getting free/cost included ground transportation to the port, Royal Caribbean tossed in a free, half-day bus tour of Barcelona when we arrived, to kill time before the ship began boarding - easily worth $50 extra per person). By the time our flights were actually confirmed by the cruise line, fares had risen to the $1300/person range (a good thing we were locked-in at the lower rate!) - so don't delay in hopes of getting a cheaper flight last-minute, and do talk to your travel agent (if you have one) about this option. While agents don't want to book air separately since the airlines stopped paying commissions, they're happy to add it to the cruise line package.

If your parents are also in Norwalk or vicinity, be sure to price flights from Newark as well as JFK.

[DrDolphin]

We flew British Airways from Philadelphia (a new route in 2007) - we did not buy coach seats - we bought what was called "World Traveler Plus" and it ran right at $1500.00 for each adult. DNiece was about $900.00 (I think).

One piece of advice - if flying through Heathrow - give your parents AT LEAST 2.5 hours between their flights for terminal changes... I would actually recommend 3 hours.