There has absolutely been no communication from Viking until this week on this trip. It is disappointing that we can’t find out any details on where we are staying when we arrive in Beijing, and what included excursions we will have both on the land portion and cruise portion of the ship. The only thing that happened this week was that we were given our air itinerary, it finally showed up on the MyVikingJourney website. I was also able to confirm that for the land trip days, we will most likely only get breakfast on the days we are staying in hotels, but dinner and lunch will be on us. I was told this is a general rule, but there might be some lunches included on excursions.
At first glance, our flights did not seem too bad, the layovers flying to Beijing, China were a little long, but not intolerable at four hours each for the two stops, one in Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW), and the other in Doho. Where you say??? We did not know either. The flights we received from Viking were on Qatar Airlines, and their hub is the Doho Airport in Qatar. Doho is the capital and largest city in Qatar. And yes, it is hard to spell something that has a “Q” without wanting to put a “U” after it!
OK, since my geography is no longer that good because of all of the changes to world maps since I was in school, where the heck is Qatar. Well, it is in the Middle East, which we figured. We consulted Google Maps and found that the country of Qatar is a small peninsula off of Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf, and is located near the United Arab Emirates However, it is also right across the Persian Gulf from Iran. Of course, Iran is not in the news these days at all, ha ha, but it seems like I might have heard something about missiles and Israel recently!!
However, there was some comfort in knowing Qatar is a wealthy country so close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they have enough money, oil and weapons to protect themselves from Iran. It also appears that Doho is a beautiful city. Online Reviews of Qatar Airlines were also great, so that was a positive.
Initially, we were fine with the flights, but in looking at them closer, we realized that the overall duration was excessive, over 32 and 34 hours for the respective duration of the outbound and return flights to/from Beijing. I had to manually add the flight durations and layover times up, there was no overall flight duration on the Viking itinerary, which is why we did not initially see just how long the flights were.
I decided to go to the Qatar Airlines website to see if there were any other shorter-duration flights available. I was able to see why Viking chose Qatar for these flights. The pricing was very competitive. I saw that our cost to purchase a roundtrip ticket from Qatar Airlines from our home airport in South Carolina to Beijing was only $2,080 per person in Economy. Obviously, Viking was paying even less through their contracted rates. As is typical for Viking, we were not really saving anywhere near the stated value of $2,899 on our “free” airfare. Unfortunately, I also saw that there were no shorter flights with Qatar than we already had. If anything, there were even longer total duration flights listed. The other item I noticed was that there was only Economy and Business Class, nothing in between, and the flights were over $14,000 for the business class roundtrip.
We started looking around and realized that typical flight durations from South Carolina to Beijing were about 25 hours on two connection flights. The Qatar flights of 32-34 hours added a lot of extra time to the already long flight durations. We also discovered that we were now leaving in the evening of September 22, and arriving in Bejing in the late morning on September 24, which is the start date of the trip for our first hotel night in Bejing. There are two timeframes for flights to Beijing. Some leave in the evening and arrive in Beijing on day two, but in the morning. Others leave in the early morning and arrive in Beijing the next day, but in the evening. We also were not flying into or out of the normal Beijing airport, designated as PEK. Our flights on Qatar were arriving and departing out of another Beijing airport, PKX. We also had to look that up to see what and where it was in relation to the city center of Beijing.
We had always planned on looking into going out a couple of days early to get acclimated to the time change, and we knew the Viking airfares that are assigned are always scheduled for “just in time” arrivals and departures at the beginning and end of the trip.
The MyVikingJourney website indicated that we should have the ability to search flights online and make any changes, knowing that we would incur a deviation fee of $100 per person for going early, and possibly also an Air Plus fee of $150.00 per person if we wanted to select our own flights. That was fine, but the webpage did not have any buttons to select to change our flights, only our itinerary was listed. We did not even have a way to change seat selections online.
I knew I was going to need to call Viking Air, that is what was instructed on their airfare FAQ page that stated if the choice for selecting alternative flights was not on the website, call into a Viking Air Specialist. Been there, done that in the past, so I knew it was not going to be easy. I first looked at some alternative flights online to get some idea of what our choices might be. In an earlier post, I am sure I mentioned that free Economy Airfare was included in our trip cost from Viking, and at a supposed value of $2,899 per person, which is always a bogus amount.
I did find some economy flights online at Delta, and the Economy flight was about $2,550 per person. What was even better is that we could upgrade to Premium seats for only $775 more per person, roundtrip, which seemed like a deal. I gathered all of the flight information for these Delta flights, with a couple of alternative departure dates and times and called Viking Air, ready to make our changes.
I was surprised that the rep I connected with spoke perfect English, which had not ever happened before when I was dealing with making airfare changes, it was always a bad connection and most persons I had talked with before had very thick accents.
I told the rep what I wanted to do, and she was a little perplexed that I was not able to look at flights online at MyVikingJourney. She then logged in as me, after first asking me to log out. Sure enough, she couldn’t make any changes either, go figure, I was not lying…..
From there, we just started to look manually. I gave her the Delta flights I was looking at and at first she was not able to see any of the outbound flights I wanted. Apparently, the return flights were listed in the system, but we never got that far. I was on and off of hold while she tried to get assistance from other staff at her location. In the end, the only Delta flights she could see were through Delta and KLM, connecting through Amsterdam, but she could not get any pricing for those flights on their system. More time on hold and the only result was that she could not get the flights I wanted, and I did not have any other alternatives for her to look at. The only positive from the call was that she was able to put in some type of request to their online troubleshooting staff and as a result, I was now able to see a link in MyVikingJourney to make flight changes, as well as seat selection changes and upgrade changes. Well, that was good, so I just said I would go online and try myself, so we ended the call.
One of the difficulties I encountered with that first rep was that I had to get her to understand that my existing Qatar flights arrived at the PKX airport designation, which I found out was the new airport in Bejing, which opened in 2019. I was able to find out that it is a really nice, modern airport, and most travelers agreed it was much nicer than the older PEK airport. However, I also found out that hardly any international flights use that airport at this time. Besides Qatar, I could not find any other airline that flew there internationally. By default, when making any airline changes, the Viking system uses the original flight airport, and that was likely some part of why I did not make much progress with the first rep, I am not sure which airport she was using in Bejing. However, since I now had access to do flight searches on my own, I was not concerned, I could make any adjustments I wanted.
Well, that was a short-lived dream. I started putting in dates for arriving on a few different days, starting with arrival on September 19, then 20, then 21, and nothing was working. In essence, Viking’s air system was telling me that there were no other flights available. I was expecting to see something, even with an increase in airfare, but nothing came up.
I was getting frustrated, and I was to the point that I decided I would just have to call Viking Air again tomorrow and go through the process with a representative on the phone.
I called the next morning and got through pretty quickly. This time, however, I was talking with someone who seemed to have a very thick Jamaican accent. She was extremely nice, and I explained all of the history of yesterday’s call and what I was trying to do. I had abandoned any thought of trying to get Premium flights, I now just wanted to get flights on something other than Qatar, maybe I could upgrade later after they were ticked.
We tried everything. She logged in as me on MyViking Journey, and she was unable to get any flights either. This was when I learned that the Vikin Air reps did not have any more access to alternative flights than I did, which seemed odd. Certainly, there were overrides. Once again, we played the “I need to put you on hold” game so she could consult with other reps. She seemed perplexed. First, she came back and said that because I had not purchased the Air Plus service, I could not see or choose any alternative flights. So, she input something into her system to temporarily show that I had Air Plus and then asked me to login to MyVikingJourney and try to select alternate flights. No such luck, nothing was available, same as before. Then she said I needed to show that I was approved for the deviation to leave two days early, so she once again tricked the system to show that I had paid for that ability. No luck, and even worse, I now lost the ability to even look for flights, that option was gone again from the MyViking Journey website, as was my existing Itinerary. It now showed the same message as zi ahead seen up until our flights showed up, it said flights would be available in June, which was not true at all.
She put me on hold again and after a bit, she told me she was going to do some more checking and would call me back in a couple of hours.
True to her word, she called back but had nothing more to offer other than she had bumped this issue up to someone on the “A-team”, which I had never heard of but assumed was a troubleshooting specialist or supervisor. However, she also told me it was going to be 2-3 days before they called me back, I did not like that plan but I had no choice. I also asked about the online access problem, and she told me she had submitted a ticket into their IT folks to get that fixed. I was just going to have to wait. Our issue is that we were trying to figure out our fights and also our excursions before we have to make the final payment on April 30, 2024, just a few days from today.
I did spend some more time on the Qatar Airlines website and registered for a login so I could try and select seats for one of the flight segments we had no seat assignments for. We had seats for all of the flights except for the longest return flight from Doho to Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW). I had tried to get the first rep I talked with to try and fix the seat issue, but it was not something she could do until the flight was ticketed for some reason. I was not able to get seats either, but now I saw two different flights to Bejing, the original one and now there was another flight routing through Toyko on Japan Airlines. It was under the same Qatar booking code. I was even able to get a login to the Japan Airlines website and select my seats on that alternate flight. I was starting to get happy again about the trip, maybe the “A-Team” person was making progress in getting the fights changed. I was just going to have to wait and see what happened when they called back.
The next day, I once again looked at MyVikigJourney and saw that I once again had the ability to make flight changes online. That was good news, but the information I had seen about the new flights to Beijing was gone, and all that was available was the original Qatar itinerary. I even tried to go back to the Japan Airlines website to look at the flight I had selected seats on yesterday, but the alternative flight I had been so happy about yesterday had also disappeared.
I continued to try and select flights through MyVikingJourney, and after a while, I was able to see that the issue with getting any alternative flights seemed to be caused by our return flight on Sunday, October 13. If I selected a return on October 14, I was able to get a few flight alternatives, but they were on Air China, and we had already done enough research to know that they were not a good airline, people gave them really bad online reviews for service and meals on their flights. In addition, it was a flight leaving Bejing so late in the evening that we did not actually get back home until October 15.
Viking does give the ability to add a stopover on both the outgoing flights and the return flights using the online flight selection page, so I started to look into that. There were only a few available stopover airports provided on the drop down menu to choose from, Inchon airport in Korea, Hong Kong, Toyko, San Francisco and Los Angeles. If I selected almost any of these, I was able to get flights home, but it would require at least a one night stay at any of the stopover locations.
I started to look at just going to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, getting a hotel for one night at the airport, and then just flying home the next day. At least we would get home on October 14th, just one day later. That was better than the option of staying another night in Bejing, leaving on the 14th and not getting home until the 15th . I chose to do some flight and hotel planning using the stopover in Los Angeles or San Francisco, getting back to the USA, and being closer to home. I looked on Booking.com for hotels at those two airports. With the deviation/stopover fee of $200 per person from Viking, hotel costs and meals, the stay in Los Angeles was about $720 and the same stay in San Francisco was about $1,256 I had chosen return flights from those two locations that did not leave really early that next morning after our hotel stay, so that put us getting back home about midnight, even with single connection flights.
We also looked into going to Hong Kong for a stopover for three nights, leaving Bejing on October 13, and then leaving Hong Kong on October 16, arriving home on October 17. The cost for the stopover stay in Hong Kong was about $1,850 for both of us, including hotel costs I found on Booking.com, airport transfers and some estimated cost for meals included. At least for that additional cost we are able to visit Hong Kong for three nights. The only downside was the extra time away from home, four more days, but really only three more than the LA/San Francisco stopover options. That was a possibility if we were unable to get any better flights on the Viking Callback.
Three days went by and we had heard nothing, so I decided to call Viking Air once again. I talked with another rep who was obviously from the US and she was very knowledgeable. She did explain and verify once again that they could not see any more flights than I could. It was just hard to believe that even for a fee, I could not get any alternative flights back to our home airport in South Carolina other than my flights on Qatar Airlines. She tried to explain that they only could book flights with their contracted rates if they were available, nothing more. I knew our ship for the cruise portion seemed to be only about half full because we looked to see if there were any other Viking specials going on for this itinerary, and could see all the available cabins still for sale. Since we were only on the hook for our total of the $50.00 deposit, we could easily cancel and rebook if there were any cheaper cabin rates. I wondered how people that signed up for the cruise/trip now would get home if we were having such a hard time getting flights, and I asked that very question. The response I got was that part of our issue was that we lived in a small airport town, not in a hub airport city.
This rep told me that she had worked for an airline in reservations for many years before Viking and that it was completely different, there were only certain flights with certain contracted rate tickets, and those were the only ones they could book at Viking. There was no adding cost to an existing reservation or ticket to make it work, it was set in stone. Maybe there is a different pricing structure in place for anyone getting reservations from Viking for the trip in the future, it was now about $2,000 more per person, but that also included the “free airfare” we had. We at least confirmed we could not change and go on this trip for less cost.
I got nowhere once again with Viking Air, there was nothing they could do. I don’t know what ever happened with the “A-team” call, it never transpired. I decided that I would just continue to monitor flight prices and availability online through MyVikingJourney. There had been a couple of times where I had seen better connections available, but they disappeared quickly before I could even make the change. They must have an automated system that ties up the tickets if someone cancels so that Viking can use them for new reservations, whatever it is, it is automated and fast.
We were still considering the Hong Kong stopover, that was the only way we could change our current flights. We were not even able to get ticketed through Qatar to leave early, we were stuck with getting there the day the trip started in Beijing unless we found an alternative flight.
In playing around with getting flight changes on MyVikingJourney, I tried selecting airports nearby to see if we could get closer to home on another flight itinerary. One time, I did see a flight available through Charlotte, but once again when I tried to go forward with selecting it, it now said it was sold out. I found a flight to Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina, and it was routed through Atlanta. The international flight was through Korea on Delta/Korean Air, and it arrived in Atlanta at about 7:25 PM. I gave it some thought and did some research to see if we could just clear customs, get our luggage, and just not go onward from Atlanta to Raleigh, just skipping that flight and purchasing a separate flight from Atlanta to our home in South Carolina on our own.
It was only possible because we were on the return, and we could have access to get our luggage since everyone has to claim their bags for customs in the US arriving airport, Atlanta in this case. We would just not recheck our bags and not complete the last flight segment. The airlines do not allow this, but it is not illegal, just against their policy. Making that change on the itinerary would also give us better outbound flights, and we could leave on Friday September 20, and arrive in Beijing on the 22nd, giving us two days to acclimate to the time change.
By the time I researched doing this online to see if it was possible, those flights also disappeared. Then, I just started to randomly look at airports in the Southeast to choose as our arrival destination, keeping our home airport as our originating airport on the outbound flights. One time Charlotte came up as a choice for the return destination, but then it also disappeared. I was finally able to find the fights we wanted when I chose Asheville, NC, as our final returning airport. That also routed us through Atlanta on the same Korean Air flight as the Raleigh-Durham flight had, arriving in Atlanta at 7:25 PM. I went ahead and booked that as quickly as I could, and was able to finally make the changes, only paying $100 per person for the deviation fee since we were going early. Once that fee is paid, it works on any deviation, even if I use the Viking online system to choose a different ticket.
At least now we would either end up in Atlanta if we chose to stop early there or Asheville if we found it was going to cause us an issue to not take the last flight segment. I needed to do more research on the possible issues of skipping the last flight, but we had better flights going out now and were not going through Qatar. On a side note, I did look at a flight mapping website and now understand why the flights on Qatar Airlines were so long in duration. First, we were going westward to connect to the DFW airport for our connection to Doho, Qatar. Then we were flying back eastward to Doho, Qatar, over the Atlantic and Europe, and that flight was over 15 hours itself. Then from Doho, it was still another 9-hour flight to Beijing. The normal flying route to Beijing is westward across the Pacific, not eastward across the Atlantic and Europe.
I did verify we were still able to add a stopover in Hong Kong if we wanted and still get decent flights both directions, although the flight to Beijing for that itinerary was through DFW and Tokyo on Japan Airlines. That is still an option. With the new itinerary returning to Asheville completed and verified through an email confirming the new flights from Viking, I felt better.
We are still not 100% sure we are even going on this trip for reasons I will cover in a bit, and I hated to invest another $200 for the deviation fee, but at least we were still on track for better and earlier flights out. I was now tired and I had a headache.
The next morning, I did some more research on the issues with skipping the last segment of our flight after we arrive in Atlanta. There are still some potential issues, one being that the only direct flights from Atlanta to South Carolina are on Delta, and we are skipping a Delta flight by not going to Asheville from Atlanta. Unfortunately, all of the other airline’s flights have connections, and there were not many that were leaving later than the 7:25 PM arrival time we now have in Atlanta. There were two Delta flights to our home airport, one leaving about 8:50 PM, which might be tough to get to since we have to check-in again and gol through security just like we are starting in Atlanta. The other left at about 10:40 PM, and arrived at about midnight which was doable schedule-wise, it gave us roughly three hours in Atlanta for a connection. Since both flights are on Delta, there is a good chance they will see we are skipping our flight to Asheville, and may not let us fly home either, so that would be $500 down the drain, the flights are about $240 per person one way from Atlanta to our home airport. It will take some more investigation to determine if that is really feasible.
In the meantime, I was also continuing to look at flights, maybe something would come up, and sure enough, when I put in Atlanta as our final destination, there were three seats listed as available and it was at no additional cost. This would fix our missed segment problem, we could purchase flights to South Carolina and not violate any airline policies. I selected the flights and was going through the required seat selection as fast as I could and on the last flight, I got a message that the flights were no longer available. I had gotten booted halfway through making the change, what a terrible system, those seats should have been held after I made the initial selection. I was not happy at all. Once again, I had been screwed by the Viking Air system when I thought we had a solution.
It is just so bizarre that I can fly to Asheville, North Carolina, but not to home to South Carolina, and it only has to do with some nebulous contract flight rates, nothing that makes any economic sense. I don’t even know why I can’t pay Viking to fly us home from Atlanta and make the trip whole.
Then I had another thought, we could just rent a car in Atlanta after we finish with Customs and Immigration, and not have the conflicting Delta flight problem. I went to Costco Travel and was able to rent a Premium Car through Alamo for a total of $85.00 with a return at our home Airport the next day. The drive is just over 3 hours. Since Costco car rentals come with a free additional driver, we should be able to share the driving task if we are tired. It is not a perfect solution, but neither would be not being able to fly on Delta because of us skipping the original Asheville connection, which would be much more expensive and require an overnight stay and maybe still drive home the next day. Our drive time home from Atlanta and the flight arrival time in our home airport from Atlanta, if we flew, would be about the same, roughly midnight.
I continued to monitor flights all day today, hoping that since it is a Sunday, something may open up. At least we now have a plan and it makes sense.
The last subject I briefly touched upon earlier was the possibility of not going to China at all. We still do not have any information on what exact tours will be included for either the land or cruise portions of the trip. I had been told a few weeks ago that the excursions would be available on April 29, one day before we have to make the final payment on April 30. I had hoped to know more, at least we got flight info before the final payment, albeit not very helpful. How can they not get us home on time…..
We do have the fallback of canceling out to 120 days for only $100 more per person, which buys us about 21 more days to sort things out. We would need to cancel before May 23, 2024. I verified our cancellation schedule on our Viking Booking Summary. But after that, the cancellation fees are over $4000 per person for the next cancellation window, and that is cost prohibitive.
The next day, I once again tried to find flights, and once more, and I was able to select flights ending in Charlotte, also connecting through Atlanta on the same flights we now have. Charlotte is at least closer if we find we have to complete the flight all the way through, although we would be arriving very late in Charlotte. However, once again, almost all the way through the seat selection process, the flights became “Unavailable”, and once again I was not happy. After some thought, I concluded that maybe since we have not actually paid the Air Plus fee, it is an outstanding charge on our payment summary, the system is not letting us make those changes.
We are waiting to see if the information I received a few weeks ago about shore excursion information is correct. I was told by another Viking Rep that excursions will be available to view on April 29. which is today. MyVikingJourney says otherwise, but it also listed a June date for our flights to be available, and that showed up sooner. Noon Pacific Time is the normal opening time for excursions, so we will at least wait until 3:00 PM today, East Coast time to see if anything shows up for excursions before we actually make the final payment.
At 3:30 PM, there was nothing online for any excursions in MyVikingJourney so I decided to call in to the Viking Customer Service, I had a few questions about other aspects of the trip that we wanted answers to before we make the final payment. I got a great rep named Rich. he was more than willing to get us answers to our non-flight questions, we wanted to see more detail on the excursions, and he was able to show me where to go on the Viking website. It was still not a regular excursion list, it was part of the information about our trip in the Viking reservations area. I had looked there before a few weeks ago and it was all just generic information. However, now it actually showed the excursions available for each day of the trip, indicated which ones were included, and also provided a short description, length of tour and tour difficulty. That was enough information to show us the excursions that were included for the land portion of the trip, which was what we wanted to know. He also told us to expect more information to be available on May 12, 2024, on the MyVikingJourney excursion area, which was 30 days before the specified June 12, 2024 date that we currently see for excursions when we go there to make reservations, at least that is our date based on our cabin classification.
I also wanted some clarification on the 120-day cancellation window, and Rich said we could just call in to cancel up until that point, but then after that, cancellation had to be in writing. That 120 days from the departure date will be our last chance to cancel without a huge fee, is is only $100 per person.
The last item was information on the special permit that is required for our visit to Lhasa in Tibet. Everyone traveling to Tibet needs a special permit that is apparently only able to be provided by a tour group, no individuals can apply on their own. After a little research, all Rich could find was that Viking would be sending out some information on that permit sometime before the trip departure, well that was some type of answer, but just about as nebulous as everything else has been from Viking so far on this trip.
Then I asked about the Air Plus fee that was now on our reservations, and he actually contacted the Viking Air group to ask about it. I was not sure anything we had done should have invoked the fee, at least based on what i know about Air Plus. After several periods of being on hold, and me explaining all of the difficulty we had so far with the airfare, it was concluded that I had indeed invoked the Air Plus fee. I had hoped when I was asking about it, and willing to pay that fee, it would allow us to more easily make online reservation changes, but I was told that was not the case. In the end, it was a good discussion on how Air Plus is really supposed to work, at least at this point in time with Viking. I admit, we have never made reservations with Viking this far out, so we were never in a position to try and make online flight changes, it had to be done quickly with a person on the phone, or at least it seemed to be the case for those other trips. Maybe next time we will know more.
The reality it is that if you even call into the Viking Air folks to check on flight availability or changes, you are using Air Plus and need to pay the fee, typically $150.00 per person. There is not supposed to be any Air Plus fee for making changes online, only through a representative. And, it is not supposed to make any difference in flights that show up online like I had thought it might. We went ahead and paid the Air Plus fee since it is supposed to be paid immediately, and is non-refundable. And in the end, it did not make a difference in online flight availability, as I was told. I tired several times afterward to make changes, and it was not possible.
Viking Air, you just have to love it……
We will hold out until sometime tomorrow to make the final payment, maybe more airfares will show up in the morning that I can select. Or, perhaps after the final payment date, more flights will be available if people elect not to go on the trip, and their flights get released. Time will tell.
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