Winair/USAIR

katva said:
Getting ready to book a trip for May----- Orbitz makes it so easy! I'm sure going direct to USAir is easy, too.....but since I'm accustomed to using Orbitz, and it's worked like a charm every time, I'm sticking with it :):up::triumphant:
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Kat - please let us know if this booking goes as smoothly as the last. We may look into Orbitz for our next trip.
 
Flew down on USAir on the 24th, we had booked separately, and USAir wouldn't put the bags through. We actually flew through immigration in SXM, grabbed the bags and were back upstairs in less than 20 minutes. We waited a little bit for our flight to SBH, nothing out of the ordinary and for the first time ever all our bags were in SBH when we got there!!
Coming home, our villa rental agency Happy-Villa printed our USAir boarding passes for us and brought them over, so when we went to the airport WinAir put our bags through to Philadelphia. Considering all the weather, equipment changes that USAir had to make with the snow, we really had stress free travel - certainly contributed to a great start on our vacation.
 
Gina-
I always book our USAIR tickets and Win Air tickets independently as the cost is significantly less than booking all the way to St. Barth from Indianapolis. The downside is we have to collect our bags in SXM and check them with Win Air at the Transit desk but there is no charge to do so. On the return, we print our US Air boarding passes and Win Air in Gustavia checks them all the way back to Indianapolis for free- i.e. no USAIR baggage fee.
 
One can also print Winair boarding passes on line as I discovered yesterday for my trip down today.
 
Tim,
I printed the WinAir boarding passes too, when we left SBH I didn't even have to give the folks at the desk my passport, since all the info is in their system. Needless to say, when we went through security to wait for the plane, the security guard asked me if I checked in, so I guess he doesn't see the paper-printed boarding passes too often.
Margie
 
I don't know if I would skip saying hello to the Winair desk even if I had Winair boarding passes. It's on the way to the Security area and I would want them to know I arrived.
 
andynap said:
I don't know if I would skip saying hello to the Winair desk even if I had Winair boarding passes. It's on the way to the Security area and I would want them to know I arrived.
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That's what I thought to, but there were a couple of folks in line at the Winair counter, so we skipped it and went right to the gate. The gate agents immediately put us on an earlier flight.
 
Out of Detroit last week I had a box I wanted to check through...done it many times.
Would not do it---they said since I had purchased tickets separately, asked for the supervisor----no way, new procedure.
HUGE hassle in SXM---said box cannot be checked at transfer desk, had to go to terminal for check in.
Fortunately, I had a friend at Winair who was able to accommodate me with tip so I did not have to schlep the box all the way through the terminal.
They said it was USair problem---none with WA.
As others have said it can change a little every time.
 
One of the huge benefits of this forum is that we can tell each other of these TINY changes and procedures. Nice to get the heads up and avoid as many problems as possible.
 
Jeff,

Why did you purchase the Winair tix separately? Were they cheaper or is there another reason?
 
I don't use Winair going down. I like SBC's flight times. Going home I do use Winair but there is no reason to buy the USAIR tix together since Winair will check my bags thru regardless.
 
Tim
Yes, I fell victim to cheaper and a strict lady and her boss.
Grabbed a single last minute ticket on Expedia and looked for SBH flights.
I've always been lucky with different purchases getting a SBH tag slapped on bags or a box--- this time my luck ran out ---I was just another schlep dealing with the system.
 
I'll be curious to hear if others have similar experiences to yours. I bought some round trip Winair tix today from US Air for $211/person, certainly not cheap.
 
I just paid that for tickets in July. Based on what it's been costing over the last year or two, I thought that was pretty reasonable.

Phil
 
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