You’ve found the perfect river cruise. The itinerary is spectacular, taking you to places you’ve always dreamed of visiting. You’ve researched the ship and are in love with it. You’ve studied the deckplans, you’ve picked your stateroom. You’re ready to go!
There’s just one small problem: You’ve discovered, late in the game, that the airfare is going to cost more than the river cruise itself.
What now?
For many of us, airfare can be a struggle, both in terms of cost and availability. But when it comes to planning your river cruise vacation, there are some simple research precautions you can take early on in the process to ensure you don’t end up on the wrong side of the airfare game. The first step starts with doing some research on your hometown airport.
For the sake of convenience, we’d all like to live near a major hub like New York or Toronto, but the fact is that river cruisers come from different parts of the world – and chances are your hometown airport doesn’t have direct service to places like Budapest or Prague. But it’s equally likely that you have more options than you know about. Wikipedia can be a great resource for researching your airport, as most have a complete listing of airlines that serve each airport along with their respective destinations (check out this page on Vancouver International Airport to see what I mean.)
Once you know where you can go from your own airport, you can better plan how you want to get to Europe, and that brings us to five tips and tricks for making air travel easier:
- Embrace Connections: Unless you’re lucky, chances are you’ll have at least one connection on your way to Europe or Asia, but there’s good news here too: Connecting flights are can be cheaper than direct flights, and in some cases, they work well with schedules that get you to your destination earlier. Connecting flights are also an excellent way to build up your frequent flier points, and those can come in handy down the road for upgrades to Business Class or entry into airline lounges at airports around the world.
- Consider Another Departure Airport: If you live near more than one airport, make sure you look at all available flights from each airport. Chances are one will be much cheaper than the other, or offer better times and aircraft. A good example of this is the New York area, which plays host to three major international airports: John F. Kennedy (JFK), La Guardia (LGA) and Newark (EWR).
- Fly an International Airline: Let’s face it, domestic service, particularly in the United States, is nothing to write home about. International service on an international airline can be a much more pleasant experience, with newer aircraft, better seats, complimentary wine, beer and spirits during and after dinner in economy class, and fewer baggage restrictions.
- Use Points: If you belong to frequent flier programs from airlines in the Star Alliance, Oneworld and Skyteam networks, you can use your frequent flier points to book tickets to Europe, provided you have enough. Don’t quite meet the minimum requirements? See if your chosen airline will let you upgrade to Business Class with the points you do have – you may be pleasantly surprised.
- Price Isn’t Always Everything: it’s all about what matters to you that determines whether airfare is truly “great” or not. Do you value price over schedule, or schedule over price? Usually, there’s a trade-off. After all, you may get a great deal by doing a three-connection flight littered with redeyes, but unless you really love to fly it may be worth spending the extra money to get yourself there comfortably.
Being in control of your airfare – instead of surprised by it – can make all the difference in planning a successful river cruise vacation.
Susanrogerstravels says
Very good article, Aaron. Thanks for the info. Susan