Med May Cruise

[daisydog1201]

What airlines have you all used to travel to Barcelona from the US? Still need to book airfare. Wasn't planning on waiting this long, but life got in the way- Thank you!

 

[BWV Dreamin]

What airlines have you all used to travel to Barcelona from the US? Still need to book airfare. Wasn't planning on waiting this long, but life got in the way- Thank you!

Back in 2011, we flew US Airways. Airlines are so different now. Check out the flight apps.

 

[DCLCruiseFan09]

I always use Kayak because they have a great price calendar to look for flights. It shows you pricing colors by date. They were how we booked for Copenhagen this year.

You can filter by most options as well (Carrier, time of day for flights, etc) which is helpful.

 

[DCL Repeaters]

May Med cruise here. Booked on American.

 

[tink1970]

I usually go to skyscanner, look for 1 way, and click "everywhere" and "nonstop" to get an idea of what carriers fly where from Europe to the US. A quick scan showed mid week, later in May United to IAD, Delta to JFK and ATL, and both AA/Iberia to several AA hubs. We flew Delta in 2018 but that's because we always fly Delta lol.

 

[MM1102]

As someone mentioned on a similar thread, Google Flights can help you with options. We're on American both ways, but connecting in Miami on the way to Barcelona and in Philadelphia on the way back home.

 

[kaseyC]

I like to use both Google flights and/or Kayak to search for flights and set up alerts. I also book directly through the airline and not a third party booking engine because it may be the lowest price and great if everything goes well but if there are issues dealing with the third party group can quickly become a nightmare.

For our upcoming April med cruise we are booked on American - RDU-JFK-BCN roundtrip.

 

[AgentMama]

Just going to second (or third) what others have said. We look at 3rd party sites (Kayak, Google, etc.) to get an idea of airlines flying the routes we need, flight availability and pricing, but we always book directly with the airlines.

 

[TinkerMama88]

As someone mentioned on a similar thread, Google Flights can help you with options. We're on American both ways, but connecting in Miami on the way to Barcelona and in Philadelphia on the way back home.

Ditto!

 

[msmama]

I was iffy flying with an airline I knew nothing about (I don't really follow airlines) but had no problems with Iberia. I picked it because it was cheapest. And I will say, if you google airline reviews, pretty much all of them are going to be bad.

I've been looking for spring flights to Europe and they seem super high right now (though I haven't looked as far away as May). I don't think you're behind in booking.

Also if you have a credit card with travel rewards, don't forget about booking through them. Some programs will transfer to "travel partner" rewards and you may save money on flights that way.

 

[daisydog1201]

Do you think an outgoing flight at 11:30 am out of Barcelona is doable? There are not too many afternoon flights and my husband needs to be back at work the next day, so we cannot have 20+ hour travel time.

 

[PsylockeSmythe]

Do you think an outgoing flight at 11:30 am out of Barcelona is doable? There are not too many afternoon flights and my husband needs to be back at work the next day, so we cannot have 20+ hour travel time.

I'm basing this off our experience when we did the Med back in 2018 (our flight back was at 2pm) and I would say that 11:30am is cutting it close. I can't be 100% sure if we had to go through a screening before or after the ticket window to check in our bags, but you will have a line to do the checked bags, a line to get through security, a line if you want to get a reimbursement for the VAT on purchases, and then you still have to go through customs and another security check. Plus, the terminal is huge, if your gate is on the very end of the terminal, expect a 10 to 15 minute walk to get to the gate. Travel time from the port to the airport should be somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes mattering on traffic.

With our flight scheduled to leave at 2pm, Disney doing the transportation back to the Airport (we took a Taxi from the Airport to Hotel), we only ended up with about 1 to maybe 1 1/2 hours to kill before we ended up boarding our flight. Things might have changed in the past 4 years, but I would still think that 11:30am would be cutting it close.

Psy

 

[NEGeekymama]

We did a Med cruise back in 2008. We flew to London (Heathrow, ugh) on Delta, then flew from London to Barcelona on one of their low-cost/no-frills airlines (EasyJet). It was much cheaper than flying direct to Barcelona.

 

[RedHead0186]

I flew to Barcelona this summer (not for a cruise though) and flew American. They had a direct flight out of O'Hare (I live in Chicago so I loved that), and price was comparable to other airlines for the same travel dates. You'll have to decide what's most important to you: price, direct flight, departure/arrival time, etc.

 

[DianaMB333]

About 8-10 days ago Lufthansa (United) had good prices... we booked from IAH at US$1.1k/person...
I was tracking it on Kayak and google flights.. and got the alert from google first.
good luck