I've been looking for flights home for Christmas and I am at my wits end! My family is in the US, and my husband's family is in Ireland, so we usually try to visit them both around the holidays. The problem is that there are no longer ANY flights to Ireland on non-budget airlines, so it is impossible to get a baggage allowance of over 20 kilos for that leg of the journey. And it's Christmas, so we bring presents, we receive presents, and there are those items available only in our home countries that we have to stock up on for the next year! So 20 k usually does not do it! Every year we end up paying ridiculous excess baggage charges which ruin our budget and our mood. This year I am determined to find a way out!
OK, so one possibility is to take the ferry to Ireland and back-- fairly straightforward, but it adds quite a lot to the journey time and costs a bit more than flying. It is more reasonably priced if you don't take your car on the boat. Has anyone tried this with large bags? Do you have to drag them around with you the whole time, or is there somewhere on the boat to store them? Also, it is a logistical nightmare using public transport to get to the ferry ports?
An even cheaper method of transport is by coach (and ferry). You can go from Cork to Manchester for only 30 Euro, but it takes 15 hours and gets in at 5 in the morning. Anyone ever tried this? Is it as bad as it sounds?
Then, there is AerLingus. They have some of the cheapest flights to the US right now anyway, so it should work out perfectly. And although their baggage allowance between Ireland and the UK is that of a "budget" airline, their website says
For Aer Lingus journeys between North America and UK/Europe, the baggage allowance for North America flights will apply to the entire journey within two weeks of initial departure date.
But apparently is is not so simple... First off, you can not book 3 flight segments on one ticket on their website. I rang them, and apparently the people on the phone can not book this for you either. So I asked if I book the England-Ireland segment separately, will the US baggage allowance still apply (as I would be flying AerLingus to/from the US within 2 weeks, as their rules state). They said NO. Now, I think there is room here to argue my case, but you know how subjective these things can be when you are actually at the airport-- one airline employee might say one thing, and another might say something else, and it is just luck who you get and what kind of mood they are in-- and if there is any possibility that we will have to argue with them on the day and potentially end up paying £5/killo, I'm not sure I'm willing to take the risk. Has anyone flown a similar itinerary on AerLingus with baggage over 20 kilos? How did it work out for you?
Finally there is the possibility of putting together my whole trip on a single ticket using Cheaptickets.com or some other search engine that can do complex itineraries with multiple airlines. The cheapest ticket by this method is flying AerLingus from the UK to the US, American from the US to Ireland, and then AerLingus from Ireland to the UK. All of the flights would print out on one page (which seems to be what AerLingus requires to give you the US baggage allowance according to my conversation with them), but not all of the flights would be with AerLingus, so I am not sure that they would actually apply the US baggage allowance (although there is 1 transatlantic flight with them, so it would seem legit according to their rules quoted above). Has anyone bought this sort of ticket before? Were there baggage hassles?
If you have any other suggestions besides the options I have outlined, I would certainly appreciate your advice!
