robin13

I am going on a cruise 11/30/18 and will be flying to FLL from DFW on 11/29/18. This is a 10 day cruise so I will be flying home on 12/10. I have been looking at airfare for this route for months and was amazed on how expensive it is to fly to either FLL or MIA on this day. Now mind you Thanksgiving is the week before so can someone tell me why this route is SO expensive? The cheapest I had found was around $335 three weeks ago but now it is up to $435. I always try to do MCE so that is another $75 so basically $500 to fly to Florida. In the past I have flown this same route for so much cheaper that I guess I thought the price would go down. I am still 7 weeks away from the cruise but I am getting nervous as my airfare isn't booked yet. I do have some miles I can use but I really didn't want to do that as I am saving them for Europe. At this point I wished I had bought the tickets at the $335 price but I didn't think that the price would have gone up $100. Should I use my miles or wait a little bit longer to see if the price goes down? Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.

IADCAflyer

I found $279.

DFW->IAH->MIA on the outbound and MIA->DFW returning.

That is a BE fare.

$329 non-BE.

wrp96

You should've booked a few weeks ago. I did for my flights leaving the day before. As to why it's expensive, you've reached high cruise season.

mvoight

FLL - 2nd most popular cruise starting point in the world (at least it was a couple of years ago)
What fare does the cruise line want if you book through them?
I have an 8 day cruise starting on a Friday in November that I booked a couple of months ago. Was stuck with a post midnight arrival on AA, because I wanted to save money, until they canceled that flight and I got to select a 10PM arrival. Returning from MIA for pricing for early afternoon flight and prem economy seats used as MCE
Whether to use miles or not, to me, depends on what else I can use them for. Are you able to get this for Milesaver? Is nonstop a requirement? If it came to a choice of connecting and paying for MCE or nonstop for the same amount of money, I would go nonstop for this short of a distance. Not worth the connection hassles, especially if there is a misconnect. Do you have AA status or credit card for free checked baggage? $335 was a decent fare.

robin13

I didn't think about asking the cruise line. Will do that and see what they come up with. Funny thing is that last week just for grins I looked at this route two weeks out and the price RT was under $275. I then looked at my dates and it was $385. Couldn't quite believe that a flight two weeks out would be cheaper than one almost 2 months out. I know that I can fly cheaper if I do BE but there is no way I can do a middle seat. I almost always pay extra for MCE as the legroom is so worth it to me.

platbrownguy

Or $329 for BE nonstop DFW-FLL. $379 for non-BE. That seems very reasonable for a roundtrip airfare. I don't understand the all caps "SO" expensive. https://www.google.com/flights/#flt=...;sd:1;t:f;tt:o

I had to fly Knoxville to DCA last week, one-way, just over an hour-long flight. $498.20 one way in a sardine can CRJ-200. That was expensive, not to mention uncomfortable. But flying costs money.

wrp96

Two weeks from now is still low season for Caribbean cruising. By the end of November, all the cruise ships will be back in south Florida. Right now they are still in Europe, the northeast, or on their way back from Alaska.

mvoight

I just check with Princess for my dates. The air quote was much too high for the flights I wanted.

wrp96

I've found for a basic domestic flight, cruise air is frequently much more expensive than booking on my own. Where cruise air tends to have advantages is one way international bookings, such as for repositioning cruises.

genotonda

This is not even remotely high cruise season. High cruise season is Summer, Over Xmas/New Years, and Spring Break. In fact, outside of hurricane season, the stretch between after Thanksgiving and before Xmas breaks start, are some some of the cheapest cruises to be had.

Even with BE, you will get a chance at T-24 to buy a seat. Chances are very good that a window or aisle will be available. This costs less than MCE, and DFW-FLL is only ~2.5 hours.

Fraser

Infrequent flyer cruise ship passengers seem to have a completely out of kilter perspective on what airfare should cost and that anything over the complete minimum (I'll call it $99 transcon ) is unfairly eating into their budget for excursions, specialty meals on their boat or what not.

Yes, I may be generalizing a little bit but for some unknown reason (despite having been on only one forgettable cruise that I'd rather not repeat) I participate on a well known cruise forum. There's a subforum for air travel which is the sole portion of that IBB that I participate on and some of the postings would tickle here pink...."I can't believe the airfare is almost as much as my cruise"...."I'm going to wait for SW* to post fares because they are always the cheapest"...."Airfares are always cheapest on Tuesdays at midnight because nobody is looking for fares then". It's entertainment gold for anyone with a modicum of experience when it comes flying. Reading it is definitely the anti-Flyertalk


*Southwest, not Air Namibia

platbrownguy

I took a cruise (forcibly, with many extended family members who wanted to do a large family trip) once and I concluded that nearly everyone on board was an irrational actor, customers and vendor-agents alike. You have to choose whether to dine at 5 p.m. or 9 p.m., and then you show up at 5 and line up for an hour. Or you can show up at 6 and maybe you get a table or maybe you line up for 2 hours. You can either sign up for a $70/day premium beverage package, in which case you'll feel the heat to "get the most out of it" or you pay $11 a pop for espresso drinks. Or you have some but not all of your party sign up for it, and then the people with the beverage package take turns running drinks to everyone else. But the food is all you can eat. Except at the specialty restaurants, where some things are bizarrely very expensive and other things are not. Phone calls are $8/minute but the ATM at the casino only charges a few bucks. Then you dock at some island and you don't really get to see Santorini. You get to see Santorini as seen on a day when it is bombarded with irrational-acting cruise-ship passengers. After you line up for ages to get off the boat and onto a tender and up the hill, and then do it all again on the flip side. And people rave about it. It's all very strange.

It's also very expensive for what you get (a tiny hotel room on a boat, limited food options that aren't very good, and perhaps some entertainment, for hundreds of dollars per night), which is why I don't understand treating a $300 plane ticket as some great expense relative to the cruise, but whatever.

JDiver

You obviously don’t take the same cruises I do.

In any case, we aren’t discussing cruises here, but AA fares to get to or from a cruise.

One way fares within North and Central America and Caribbean area are often half the price of a round trip. Once you’re going transatlantic one way you can see prices that can easily be 2-3 times the cost if a round trip (a recent SMF-DFW-KEF in Business to catch a cruise via Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to NYC was over $8,000 per person - that’s when we book with miles).

Fares can be high when there’s high demand, low supply. We fly SXM-CLT on the day several ships arrive and depart SXM in December, and AA has an A319 flying twice - one too early to reliably take after a cruise - on that day. And buying can be tricky: you might see cruise companies buy a block of seats to sell to their passengers reduce availability, and low fare classes get bought up - or see higher fares based on Revenue Management prediction demand will be high. But if fares don’t sell as expected, RM might release lower fare seats closer to flight day. Frustrating.

Nonstop flights might cost more than through flights, which might cost more than those with more connections or a forced overnight.

Collierkr

JDiver

Are you quite sure southern Florida summer* is high season for cruises?

*hurricane season