News: 

The inspections come almost three weeks after the FAA ordered a check of all U.S. airlines’ maintenance records. That was after controversy erupted over its handling of missed safety inspections at Dallas-based Southwest Airlines. The FAA hit Southwest this month with a $10.2 million civil penalty for missing the inspections and then continuing to fly the planes with passengers on board even after realizing the mistake. 

How Safe is Air Travel

Answer: Very Safe but Not Improving.Go to our website (justcruisesplus.com) and click on “blog” to read a very good piece on the current state of affairs.  Then write to your senators and insist that more needs to be done before disasters strike. 

If the airfare is cheap, must it be Tuesday?

BY ELLEN CREAGER

Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — Are airfares really cheaper on Tuesday nights? That was the question I posed a few weeks ago. I asked for reader help in monitoring airfares for a theoretical trip leaving April 1 to any destination.Now, results are in. And guess what? It appears that if airfares are going to drop, it probably will happen sometime between Tuesday morning and Wednesday afternoon.Nine of 15 routes monitored by readers had price drops on a Tuesday or Wednesday. No routes had price drops on a Thursday or Saturday. Few drops occurred on Sunday, Monday or Friday. The trend happened across multiple airlines.That’s hardly a massive scientific poll. But it tends to reinforce the theory.”I am never buying a ticket on Sunday or Monday again. The Tuesday theory works according to my research,” reported Patricia LaBeau, after she tracked a round-trip flight from Detroit to Savannah and saw it drop from $324 at 11:01 p.m. on a Monday to $215 at 11:45 p.m. on a Tuesday.Jim Herman tracked a Detroit-Pensacola round-trip and watched it drop from $359 at 12:30 p.m. on a Monday to $215 at 5:50 a.m. Tuesday.Of course, if it were that easy, we’d all be buying tickets on Tuesdays.In reality, the fluctuation in airline ticket prices is about as predictable as the flight of a butterfly and as tricky to predict as pork futures.”I worked for the airlines for 34 ½ years, and I can tell you that the airfares generally are not cheaper on Tuesday,” a former ticket agent told me. “The airline offers so many seats at each airfare. When they run out of seats in a particular class, you will quote from the next highest category.”However, Carl Schwartz, spokesman for Cheapflights.com, says most sales the airlines advertise start on Tuesdays. Diluting Tuesday’s power is the fact that unadvertised sales ”can happen constantly throughout the week and at any time of day. They can run for just a few hours or a matter of weeks,” he says.What about the second theory, the one that buying tickets after 11 p.m. or midnight is best? It turns out that the theory holds water — but only if you are looking for a frequent flier award ticket or a nondiscount seat on a crowded holiday flight, Schwartz says, because those types of tickets are released at midnight. For other deals, the evidence is pretty shaky.Of course, some readers who did the test came away believing the Tuesday night theory is a dud.Rackeline Hoff found a Detroit-Los Angeles round-trip fare that was $379 on a Saturday fall to just $331 on a Sunday, only to rise again to $344 on Monday and Tuesday.Sue Armstrong found her cheapest flight from Detroit to Maui, $818 round-trip, on a Friday; Tuesday and Wednesday prices were more than $125 higher: ”It does disprove the Tuesday night theory,” she says.Randy Knight tracked a Detroit-Dallas fare for 10 days and found if you bought during the first Tuesday night dip for $245, you would miss an even lower fare the next Tuesday night, $229.But don’t give up. Monitoring prices of the routes you plan to fly can pay off.”Being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of it is about 75 percent of the requirement for snagging the deal of a lifetime,” says Schwartz.Laura Bauman can testify to that. She went online every hour on the hour on the Spirit Airlines Web site one Wednesday looking for flights to Orlando, until ”about 1:30 p.m., when I noticed they had their fares for $8 each way,” she says. “I punched in the days that they had available for tickets, and I was so excited to see that I was able to get my airfare.” 

Royal Caribbean/Celebrity/Azamara to Give Back Fuel Surcharge

 Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has reached an agreement with the Florida’s Attorney General office whereby it will refund the $5 per-day fuel supplement customers were forced to pay on cruises booked before November 16, the day the initial fuel supplement charge was implemented. Those who have already paid the fee and taken their cruise will receive a refund, while those who booked trips before November 16 but have yet to cruise will receive their refunds in the form of an onboard credit. The fuel surcharge is still in effect for North American bookings made on or after November 16 for Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises and cannot exceed $70 per person. It is also only applied to first and second passengers in a stateroom.We believe that other cruise lines will follow Royal Caribbean’s lead in giving refunds to everyone who was under deposit when the charge was announced.

Celebrity and Azamara Captains to Wed Couples at Sea

Celebrity and Azamara Cruise Lines will launch legal, captain-led wedding ceremonies later this year to complement their existing vow renewal and in-port wedding offerings.

Passengers being married at sea by Azamara and Celebrity captains will be offered a variety of packages that include anything from private receptions in their ship’s specialty restaurant to cake, champagne, and more. Basic captain-performed wedding packages begin at $2,500. Guests should book their wedding in advance of their sailing in order to allow time for the processing of licenses and other legal documents.

 Flexible Dining Options.  Who’s Next?First, Princess Cruises offered guests a choice between traditional, assigned-seating dining and more flexible, “anytime” dining. Then Holland America jumped on the bandwagon, and began rolling out its “As You Wish” dining last year. With NCL already firmly entrenched in its Freestyle Dining program, we’ve been wondering: Who’s next with flexible dining?

Word is that it’s Celebrity. The speculation is that on the new Solstice, the lower levels of the main dining room would be traditional dining and the upper restaurant would be anytime dining.

Even though Celebrity won’t confirm whether these rumors are true or not, we do know for sure that Royal Caribbean, Celebrity’s sister line, is testing a Princess-like dining program on three of its ships right now.