Blueboys999

KeaneJohn

sammyg901

My best guess is they've cancelled these off peak Saturday AM flights to avoid having to position an extra crew to operate them. The aircraft arrives the night before but the same crew can rest then before resuming the schedule in the afternoon

as KeaneJohn says, last year was a very ambitious schedule and the resulting delays and cancellations were a real headache

+1 for either the Travelodge (you can walk to the airport) or Ryanair - once you arrive there are plenty of coaches for a few Euros (don't bother prebooking then you can pick whichever leaves soonest) - absolutely simple so your wife shouldn't be too worried

FlyerTalker39574

RockyRobin

catscall

corporate-wage-slave

If your partner is on the same reservation as you, and you are Silver, I don't see what the problem is, you can seat them next to you. So why not look at something like LHR-BLQ and then the train? BA will say the (low) train cost is for your own pocket - but it's not actually correct, EC261 protects you here if they can't come up with a sensible FLR service. Then engineer it so that you are both on the same booking.

polochick

I used to fly to Florence a lot and half the time the flights would end up in Pisa anyway due to weather conditions (wind, fog etc.), and then you'd end up on a bus to Pisa, but rather than quickly jumping on the bus outside the terminal the airline would take a while to arrange things (despite it happening all too frequently) so you would wish you had bought the ticket to Pisa at a fraction of the price you had paid for Florence. I think BA's record is a little better than this but as someone else mentioned, Florence is really susceptible to the weather. Also there are issues in summer, e.g. if you take a full Vueling flight and it's warm, they will offload a few people and leave literally all of the luggage behind (HBO is the way to go!) and conveniently not tell anyone about the bags until arrival at the destination.

You can also go for the Pisa mover and train combination if you're averse to a bus, but it takes the same amount of time give or take.

Catscall is right - Bologna is very handy, especially since you have a choice of high speed trains (italo and trenitalia) which only take just over half an hour.

polochick

The other advantage of flying to Pisa is that it's switching to T3 from 31 March so you get to enjoy the Cathay lounge

P.s. If you do go for Pisa and opt for the bus, it is run by Autostradale and you can get tickets here. I think there may be another service but I can't remember what it's called.

CoweyB

RockyRobin

corporate-wage-slave

Have you checked the cost of a new booking? If so you can just ask for a full refund, and then rebook on the same booking together. The problem here as I see it wasn't anything other than that for you to exercise your Silver privileges you need to be on the same booking. This would have been the case on the initial flight too so presumably you paid for seat reservations there, and this would be refundable. On an Embraer there aren't really any bad seats so regardless I would expect two good seats being available somehow, perhaps via your Theoeretical Seating block, so just select a seat for yourself three quarters of the way down the cabin.

Blueboys999

While the train journey is quicker from Bologna the time to get from the airport to the station by bus is much longer and less frequent and the total cost is noticeably higher. Just yesterday it took me 65 minutes to get from Florence station to PSA airport (on an inclusive ticket) and that was with having to take the replacement bus from Pisa Centrale because the Pisa Mover is out of action this week.

FlyerTalker39574

Blueboys999