Air Travel ATL to Rome in Oct 2021

[5Miler]

We are hopefully, heading off on an 11 day Med cruise of the Greek islands this coming October flying into Rome to kick off the trip. There are probably 10 or so people traveling with us as a group on the cruise.

Monday evening we looked online to see about finalizing our airfare but ran into issues as DGF couldn't access my airline credit without assistance from Delta. We decided to put it off until Tuesday at that point since it was getting late and I was enjoying a dose of Hydrocodone from my nose surgery that morning. So Tuesday morning we get back online and found our preferred seating and flights dropped by $600 each for Delta One round trip travel. It took us almost 6 hours to get Delta online to get the credits applied correctly but we did get it done. That evening when we looked to confirm our ticketing (which was good) we saw the Delta One tickets for our flight were up almost $1800 each from what we had just booked.

I'll never understand airlines pricing.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I don't understand airline prices either. I do try and search for airline tickets online incognito, although I am not sure if this helps. I have read online before that when the websites detect you searching for a particular destination more than once for airline tickets , the price automatically goes up. I wouldn't doubt this would be true, but I do not have any evidence that this is the case.

 

[Bamaman]

I hope your tickets are refundable. We were going to Europe the end of March, 2020, but our American Airline flight obtained through Ovago.com were cancelled due to coronovirus.

Ovago did nothing to help obtain a refund from American. After 4 months, I finally documented to American Airlines that we had no control and Ovago was repaid for the tickets the first of August. We have never received our return airfare that Ovago received 5 months ago.

I've never seen a company that was so hard to contact, that doesn't return phone calls or emails. And Ovago has never notified us if they were ever going to pay. I filed a claim against their credit card with Capital One.

With continued virus problems worldwide, I would be hesitant to book any vacation without fully refundable airfares. And after dealing with an internet middleman, I'll only book directly through airlines in the future.

We have been on a cruise thru the Med to Malta, the Greek Islands and Turkey. It was one of the best trips ever. Hope it all works out for you.

 

[audreyh1]

That evening when we looked to confirm our ticketing (which was good) we saw the Delta One tickets for our flight were up almost $1800 each from what we had just booked.

I'll never understand airlines pricing.

There is usually a small number of tickets on a major sale, and when those are taken, prices jump.

 

[5Miler]

I hope your tickets are refundable. We were going to Europe the end of March, 2020, but our American Airline flight obtained through Ovago.com were cancelled due to coronovirus.

Ovago did nothing to help obtain a refund from American. After 4 months, I finally documented to American Airlines that we had no control and Ovago was repaid for the tickets the first of August. We have never received our return airfare that Ovago received 5 months ago.

These tickets were purchased directly through Delta which is our standard practice these days. They are not refundable but they are valid until Dec 31, 2022 and should not incur change fees. That meets our needs as our annual tickets for our Bonaire dive trip cost nearly the same so we would have no problem using the credits. Actually part of these were paid with a credit from our Bonaire tickets from 2020. That trip was cancelled due to covid-19 and the tickets for 2021 are just over $400 cheaper so we applied the credit to the Rome tickets. I'm more worried about Bonaire in April/May.

We went on a Med cruise out of Barcelona two years ago with another group of friends and family. Most of them will be the same as this planned trip. It was a great time. I was stationed in Germany for three years in 1978 through 1981 and deployed often to some these countries but of course we never went to the tourist locations. It's a whole new experience.

DGF became a part time travel agent many years ago so I leave everything to her. She only does work these days for family or maybe friends if they are going on a trip with us and want help with arrangements. It gets us 10% off cruises and land packages like for Bonaire but is worthless for air. Still better than a sharp stick in the eye.