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| Above, cruise ship departure from Miami cruise terminal. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
Last summer, a friend and I booked a flight out of Albuquerque to Miami to take a cruise to the Bahamas.
We booked a flight that arrived in Miami in the wee hours of the morning of our cruise departure date. We had no problems getting to Miami, but the flight was a long one as we had to catch a transfer flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Miami.
Getting to the cruise terminal from the Miami airport was a different matter. We pre-paid for a shuttle service, but that never arrived. We called them several times and got no response. Ultimately, we took Uber to the terminal.
TheStreet posted an article on the pitfalls of airline flights to reach a cruise departure port.
They start with:
Sometimes, even when you think you’re playing it safe with your travel plans, what can go wrong does go wrong.
Even if you’re an experienced cruiser with plenty of smooth sailings under your belt, your streak of good luck can easily be broken by circumstances outside of your control.
If you’re flying to your cruise departure port, your chances of a flight delay impacting your arrival at the port are pretty significant. On average, more than 20% of flights experience some kind of delay, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation statistics.
Booking a flight that arrives on the same day as your cruise is risky and generally not recommended due to the unpredictability of air travel. Most expert cruisers recommend always flying in the day before your cruise departure. But sometimes, even that isn’t enough.
Frankly, flying is no longer enjoyable for me. Too many flight problems have cropped up over recent years. I am now avoiding airlines and just going to travel with my motorhome. At least I have more control traveling that way.
To read more, go here.
2 comments:
Flying has become so unpleasant that I try to avoid it as much as I can, not easy when you live in a location like southern Manitoba, which is practically in the middle of nowhere. Having to arrive at the airport more than three hours before your flight departs (if it's an international flight), the horrible cramped seating on the plane, the lack of service, overbooking and getting bumped, delays in take-off (sometimes resulting in missed connections), the ridiculous security checks, poor layouts of airports (for catching connecting flights), the incompetence of the airport authorities (constant gate changes, planes pulling into the wrong deboarding areas)... the list goes on. I've come to hate flying. You go on a nice vacation and then that last day (flying back home) is a sh!tty end to an otherwise nice time. Anyone my age remembers when flying was a pleasant experience, and you could walk up to the airline counter and buy a ticket on a flight just like you could for a train or a bus. Young people today would never believe such a thing was even possible. This is progress???
You have just described my exact feelings about flying and for the same reasons.
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