USVI-On-Line

On Sat 7/27 my wife and I will be back to STJ for a week. We needed to cash in 100K of frequent flier miles to do so, but hey - whatever it takes!

Anyway, we are looking to "non-rev" (stand-by travel for airline employees) our daughter down for a few days but literally can't find any seats for her. Looking at the flight loads for the entire week, there are only scattered seats (mostly 1st Class) for both arrivals and departures between STT and Atlanta on Delta. And the waitlist for standby travel is already 15-20 long!!

Those $800+ round trip tickets from Minneapolis that we laughed at in April are making some sense now. The prices haven't moved much and the planes have filled up.

Bottom line - I wouldn't be looking for fare sales anytime soon. As long as we keep buying those $800 tickets, they are happy to keep selling them!

Southwest is running fare sales to San Juan. Book with them and then a R/T to STT. It should save you a few hundred bucks

I was so happy when Southwest started flying to San Juan but I have yet to see them be competitive with other carriers after I add the SJU to STT airfare. It is not always the island hopper cost that kills the deal either. I really, really hope that SWA opens up to the caribbean and offers competition to the caribbean airfare industry.

toes in the sand wrote: I really, really hope that SWA opens up to the caribbean and offers competition to the caribbean airfare industry.

Agreed 100%. The demand for seats is there!

mn, atl/stt is hard nrev rte in summer. by traveling weekdays and booking villas last minute I had a string of 15 successful trips (except for once having to buy cape air ticket to sju to catch a sju to atl) but most of those were not summer. several of those trips were traveling with s4's I with us. that was until last week.

buddy and I were sweating getting out of atl on 7/4 (made 1st flt) and planned return on 7/11. when we left atl, there were plenty of seats for return. on evening of 7/9 buddy got antsy and paid $550 for 1 way coach to atl. I was still confident I could make one of flts, Thursday am I bought a 1 way 1st class and would not have made it home otherwise.

while looking at alternatives I noted sju/atl fares aren't too bad and some seaborne sju/stt rts are under 200. a pain but probably cheaper. don't believe delta has luggage agreement with seaborne so d may have to claim bag and go back through security in sju. that's what we had to do we we came home on cape air via sju.

good luck

papabou

MN - have a great trip.... you know the drill from MSP. I agree with your comments about it making those 50k in FF a wise move. I'm thankful we did the same for December.
Have a wonderful trip. Where are you staying this time?

papabou wrote:mn, atl/stt is hard nrev rte in summer. by traveling weekdays and booking villas last minute I had a string of 15 successful trips (except for once having to buy cape air ticket to sju to catch a sju to atl) but most of those were not summer. several of those trips were traveling with s4's I with us. that was until last week.

papbou - my daughter would be traveling S3B (my ex-employee priority) but the loads and waitlist are way too risky. Don't want to be shelling out for a one way 1st class seat, because that's pretty much all that is left.

mnfun2bme wrote:Have a wonderful trip. Where are you staying this time?

mnfun2bme - Thanks!! We are staying again at Grande Bay (Egret's Rest). It's the perfect setup for us - close to town, we like hiking to Solomon, and the people/owner are great to deal with. We can't wait, especially after a long weekend in Brainerd for a baseball tournament!!!

See you Saturday on the plane!

Nanque wrote:See you Saturday on the plane!

Nanque - we are on the 530am out of MSP to ATL. Only an hour layover before the 9:45 to STT. I think we are in row 28 (or close to there) on the F seat window. Have a great trip!!