Seabourne Airlines

We booked a flight on Seabourne from SJU to Antigua several months ago for this Saturday. I had to call them today with some baggage questions and found out only then that they are not flying that flight or any flights from June 3 to who knows when. I never got any notification that the flight was cancelled and there was no refund given to me until I called and discovered the cancellation. If I had not called we would have been stuck in San Juan scrambling to find a flight to Puerto Rico. I'm scrambling as it is now trying to decide if I should roll the dice with Liat or just take the hit for a charter flight. Any ideas?

Matt

I would go with LIAT - apparently they have been much better lately.

Glad to hear as I just booked with them before you posted. Was either that or 4x as much for a charter. I don't mind if the flight is an hour or so late, just don't want to be spending the day at the San Juan airport. Our luggage situation is a bit complicated with six regular checked bags, a fairly large kiteboard bag and a guitar that we can hopefully carry on. Nice thing is it looks like they only charge $80 for the kiteboard compared to $200 for Seabourne. We'll keep our fingers crossed. At least our boat charter doesn't start until the next morning.

Seabourne has been in financial trouble for a long time. The pilot shortage at the regional level is becoming acute with many airlines offering 15,000 signing bonuses for pilots poached from another airline. It may be they don't have pilots. Cape Air is also struggling and has had to cancel flights on their US operation. Not sure if their has been a impact on the SJU hub.

Yikes... I have a flight with Seaborne through AA codeshare next Wednesday from SJU to EIS. I called both American and Seaborne and both confirmed that the flight is still scheduled. Question for OP: Was the information you received specific to the flights to Antigua only? Very afraid of trusting them... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Sad.gif" alt="" />

LIAT have been much better recently. Our flights last month, and some guests on different dates, all actually took off early. Hope you are as successful.

It may have only been their Antigua flights that were cancelled. Maybe it makes sense for LIAT to be the only carrier for that route during the slow season since they are based in Antigua. I understand that schedules change and things happen, but it would be nice to get notice and an automatic refund when a flight is outright cancelled. I guess it is possible that they did send an e-mail to me and it went into a SPAM folder, but I have received e-mails in the past from them and I do scan over junk and spam e-mails before deleting.

Thanks for the additional positive LIAT vibes salica. Feeling a bit better about the flight. As a bonus, it was less expensive than the Seabourne flight we had booked, our first checked bag is free, our kiteboard gear is going to cost 1/2 as much as Seabourne was going to charge and we are scheduled to get to Antigua 1-1/2 hours earlier too. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise.

Sounds good. If you haven't been to Antigua airport in a while, the new terminal is now in operation and pretty good. Things work quite efficiently. However there is nothing in the Check-in area, well, a tiny cafe that closed when we arrived, not even a vending machine to buy soft drinks. We were stuck there for four hours befor we could check in for our next flight, and not a lot when in Departures. Very swish, yes, but few shops and prices for food and drink astronomical. $8 for a bottle of water !!!! Best be prepared.

To the original poster, hope things work out for you on Liat. That would be good news if in fact they are improving their service record.. (...although there is nowhere for them to go but UP. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Crazy.gif" alt="" />) Your situation is another reminder that, regardless of the carrier, you need to re-confirm your air arrangements, early and often, to ensure the flights that you THINK that you are on, you actually ARE! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" /> It seems to be a pretty constant theme, airlines change their schedules, etc., and somehow you don't find out about it.

Bilge Idiot--It doesn't necessarily help, but you might check actual schedules through Flight Aware and see if the flights have actually been operating this week. Since your flight is a codeshare, presumably AA should know if they are still flying your route though.

Ugh - we were thinking about booking flights with a Seaborne leg for November - now I am hesitant.

How is it such a pain to get to Tortola? Ferry system can be borderline abusive but at least it runs... most of the time, even if it's not one time. And I guess if you get stranded on St. Thomas you can also pony up for a pricey water taxi at the last minute...?

Excellent point. I didn't even think of that. I checked and it appears as though they are still completing flights from SJU to EIS at this time. I'll be keeping an eye on this throughout the week. Thanks so much Carol!!

No problem. Hope your flights go off without a hitch!

salica - good info on the Antigua terminal. Fortunately we will be flying out of St. Martin so we won't have to deal with $8 bottles of water (and you know each of my kids would want one cause at that price it must be some great tasting water).

Kryssa - If I was flying from San Juan to Tortola I would look into an air charter. If you can't fill the plane you can often find people on this board or other boards to fill the extra seats. If you do manage to fill it the cost per seat is often just slightly more than a commercial ticket. The benefits are no security, no waiting in line to check luggage and get ticketed, no extra fees for luggage and generally no delays or schedule changes. Basically you just show up at the arranged time and go. I was very close to doing it for our upcoming flight to Antigua, but in the end the cost for that charter would have been a lot more. Oddly, a commercial flight from SJU is about the same price whether you fly to EIS or ANU, but a charter flight is 2-3x more to get to ANU.

Also, good advice from Carol (as always). I did check the Seabourne website a couple months ago because I was looking at changing our flight by a day. I did not see any flights from SJU>ANU on or around the dates of our flight. I figured maybe they were all full and that's why they weren't showing up. To be sure I checked my confirmation number and it still came up as expected on the Seabourne website so I figured our flight was still on. I probably should have called at that point but didn't since my confirmation number still showed us on the flight. Maybe checking a site such as flight aware would have given me more time and options.

Wow, that's really bad on their part, that you checked your confirmation numbers and they were still showing you on a non-existent flight! Hope things go well for you.

It's a pain because American pulled out the 64 seat ATR's flying 6 to 8 flights a day. No one has filled that void and the ferries used the opportunity to raise fares.
G

I believe Winair is now flying to SJU.