We have not been doing much for this trip, there is not really a lot to do since all of the locations we are visiting and accommodations at each location have already been booked.
We have had to deal with two flight changes since the last update. Thank you American Airlines. Both changes have been with our flights to Anchorage on July 1, 2023. The first change was due to a change in the schedule of the fight between Seattle and Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. We were put on an earlier departure from Seattle to Anchorage which was good, but the earlier flight only left us with 13 minutes to make our connection in Seattle, basically impossible to make. I am not sure what automatic system is used to determine these changes, but it can’t be very good.
We had to call in to American Airlines, and the American Representative kind of laughed when he saw the connection time. We actually got much better flights since they were obligated to accommodate our wishes, they had made the change to our flights, not us.
We were able to book an earlier flight out of Columbia, SC, with only one connecting stop in Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW). We were scheduled to arrive in Anchorage about 4:15 PM, which was about two hours earlier than the original flight arrival time. Life seemed good, better flight times and only one connection instead of two.
Unfortunately, this did not last long. A few weeks later, right after we got home from our Antarctic Expedition Cruise, we received an email notification of another flight change, also to the flight out to Anchorage. This change was even more perplexing than the short layover that we were given on the first flight change. We were now leaving from Charlotte. NC, not Columbia, SC, still routing though DFW, and then onward to Anchorage. However, we don’t live in Charlotte, and we had purchased tickets for departures out of Columbia.
I had to look at the flight schedules on American’s website to see what possibilities there were for flights leaving from Columbia. Apparently, the direct DFW flights from Columbia no longer existed except for the very early morning around 5:40AM, and then late in the evening around 6:00 PM. Those time would not work. Our first revision DFW scheduled flight from Columbia had disappeared, and no longer existed.
We had a couple of choices, but in the end, we chose to depart Columbia at around 7:00 AM, and we will arrive in Anchorage around 4:25 PM, with two connections, one in Charlotte and the other in Seattle. These were about the same flights we had at first, maybe leaving and arriving a little earlier, but still connection through Charlotte and Seattle, with the last flight from Seattle being with Alaska Air. At first, I was told by the American Airlines Rep that they could not book us on the Alaska Air flight if there was an American Airlines flight available. I told him we had originally been booked on these similar flights, and he was apparently able to book us with our requested changes. These flights were now listed on American’s website as $1,900 per person flights. Our flights are both one-way flights coming and going, and that impacted the price much more than when we originally bought them at $497 per person, when there was no differential for one way flights (see my earlier post).
Unfortunately, seat selection on the Charlotte to Seattle flight was not great, we could not get seats near Ashley and Bryan, who also had to change their flights. But, at least for now, we have decent flight times and layovers on the way to Anchorage.
Our return flights were also changed, but only for some schedule adjustments, but this unfortunately gets us back to Columbia about 20 minutes later, and we now arrive about 11:40 PM. There are no other flights that are better, so we did not try and change these with American.
On a more positive note, we did book an excursion in Seward, Alaska. We will be doing a 7.5 hour Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise through a company called Major Marine Tours. We will be taking the tour on July 9, 2023. It is a little ironic because Ashley and Bryan let us pick the cruise between the two that were available. They had already done the other selection that we had to choose from when they visited Alaska in 2020. This cruise is scheduled to visit two glaciers and the other one was only going to go to a single glacier, and was more geared toward bird watching. We chose it for two reasons, it was new for Ashley and Bryan, but mainly because we wanted to see more glaciers. We booked this day cruise before we went to Antarctica, where we saw literally dozens of glaciers, maybe not as tall above the water, or as long as the ones we will see in Alaska, but they were everywhere in Antarctica.
It will still be a wonderful experience in Alaska, but we had no clue we would see as much glacial ice as we did on the Antarctic trip.
Here is a link to the Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise we are doing through Major Marine Tours in Seward, Alaska.
We also received a call from Sandy at Asta Gallery & Suites to confirm our booking dates and deposit, so that stay is set.
That is about all we have done recently on this trip, it is sort of on cruise control until we get closer to departure. Unfortunately, I am sure we will see more activity on the flights, which can’t be good, especially since seat availability is already looking limited, so any other changes will most likely have impacts on seat selections on the flights between the major hubs like Charlotte and Seattle since we are closer to the departure date.