TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Silver Airlines and AA

Does anyone know whether AA has ceased their contract with Silver Airways beyond June 2022? I have booked AA from Buffalo thru EIS from June 24th to July 15th by Expedia. Was notified of an "significant change" by Expedia. Found our flight down is ok but returning in July there is no AA associated flight out of EIS to SJU. Anyone have any thoughts?...Jet Blue does have flights returning from EIS in July via Silver Airways????

This has happened before with both Silver (Seaborne) and Cape Air. They may be renegotiating contracts, or the new schedule may not be ready. I would give it another month and see. BTW, we always buy tickets direct from the carrier. Should something go wrong, and it happens, you won't be told to contact the ticket vendor. You also want all your flights on one ticket so you're not left holding the bag if something goes wrong.

Completely agree with this. Expedia is a good reference point. But booking directly with the airline saves potential issues.

Advice received...although it has been fine in the past with minimal issues to book thru Expedia ....lesson learned. Trying to be patient and hope it resolves as they negotiate new timing...funny, currently I am booked from EIS to SJU and then CLT to BUF...I guess they think I am going to swim to CLT as that is a missing leg..

Neil, so your ticket has been rendered useless. Does that allow you to cancel and get a refund? We use Google Flights to check routes and availability. At the bottom there is a button to go to whatever airline. You are still buying direct from the airline, sometimes at lower cost than going directly to the airline's web site.

Thank you that site helps....although my tickets are now double the cost...I will need to work with both Expedia and AA to resolve

We have July tickets MIA to SJU (AA) to EIS (Silver) purchased through AA and haven’t received any change notifications.

By flying in a day early we saved $500 a ticket. We even signed up for the AA credit card to get free checked bags and some extra miles.

Good luck!

I am planning to buy AA flight from Philly connecting to silver airlines to EIS. The transit time in SJU is 1 hr 30 minutes. Do you think I can make it or its cutting too close? If i miss this flight, considering there are no silver airways flight after the 1.35 pm flight, do you think AA will put me in other airlines like cape air, or I have to stay in SJU for an extar day to take the next silver airway flight?

Should be no issue going down; an hour is fine. Once you check in, AA is responsible for getting you there. George would know better, but unless it's a weather delay, they will have to put you up or find you another flight.

I would not worry about a 90 minute connection time. Your bags will be checked through and as mentioned AA owns the problem if something goes wrong. With the timing of the BVI leg your departure out of PHL is early and probably a first flight of the day. Those tend to have very high on time performance.

Silver Airways has discontinued flights to Governor's Harbour, Bahamas, and will soon suspend flights between Broward County.

We have had a very difficult time getting the local airlines to honor baggage issues. Most times they have insisted the guests return to the airport for their own bags and will not deliver them to CGB as they would in the US. Because they also refuse to tell you if the bag made it to EIS, it often takes many international phone calls and a couple of taxi trips.

Try to carry-on!

They only advantage is you normally don't have to deal with the grumpy officer at customs because the late bags usually just pass thru.

NeilCanada - did you get this flight issue resolved?

We just lost our AA/Silver EIS to SJU flight on July 10. It just disappeared. I see lots of hold time in my future but hope to get this resolved. We are a group of 11 which eliminates us from most charters - unless we do 2 which is $$$$.

Thanks.

Time to switch to the ferry and St Thomas..seriously!..

Agree with Manpot!

We are now trying to switch to STT - appreciate the comments.

This is my 5th trip to the BVI's - 4 of them were through STT. We have 11 people in our group - some of them are kids who are going for the first time. And we are flying in from Seattle so it is a long day of travel. Those are some of the reasons we decided on flying directly into EIS this time. Best laid plans.

You are making us nervous! We still have our July 4th SJU to EIS AA/Silver flight and our July 19th EIS to SJU showing up on AA.

Like you, last few times through STT with the ferry wasn't bad, just thought EIS would be easier with the recent chatter of the ferry schedules/requirements changing every day.

We will have bathing suits and toothbrushes in our carry-ons if we get stuck in Miami or San Juan!

Without a doubt. Go thru St Thomas. Carry on.

We switched a week ago, going July 12 thru the 24th.
We thought we had to make it work thru SJU/EIS, we have one unvaccinated going, then the rules changed. So direct to STT, then the ferry.

We have flown American/Silver the last 5 trips and we had our first hiccup yesterday. We walked out to the Silver plane in Tortola to fly home and were about to board when they paused us. After a few minutes of crew and ground staff interaction, they announced to the passengers that the plane was overweight and only 10 carry on bags could be loaded. However, they had no idea how to accomplish this and of course no one wanted to leave their bags.

We pack a lot since we are on the boat for two weeks and we like things like our Mantus dinghy anchor - so we had 7 bags (4 checked and 3 carry on). I told them that I was fine with them keeping them all for a later flight so we didn't have to deal with partial bags in PR, but they ultimately loaded 1. As of tonight, we have no idea where our remaining 6 bags are and no one has called or emailed - even though we filed claims with Silver in PR and American when we landed at home.

Overall, we had a great trip and I'm confident that our bags will come, but we feel like Silver is deteriorating in quality. I typically book our flights as soon as they post, so I will have to decide between St. Thomas/Ferry and Beef Island over the next month or so. There are pros and cons to all the options, but our bags not making it on the trip down would suck.

I checked the dates one month prior to our trip next year earlier today and the STT tickets are actually $30 more than the EIS tickets - weird. I'll keep thinking and reading your responses prior to making a decision. I'm starting to think that we have just been lucky over the years.

Flying from the West Coast..first LAX and now SFO on American I have found tix are $200 to $500 cheaper flying to STT rather and San Juan..plus I have had some nasty experiences in J..stolen stuff..rude staff..cancellations etc. That's why its the ferry for me.

We can get to our house in one day going through San Juan, but not through STT. Neighbors do go through STT, and either charter a plane to Beef or spend the night in Road Town.

One time we were leaving Beef and they actually made a lady get off the plane because it was overweight. She was not happy. Coming in last winter on Cape Air, the plane was full and only one person received their checked bag. The biggest issue was the lady at the desk - friendly, but glacial. It took an hour for her to record the bag details.

I, too, have seen the tickets to STT costing more, but they are all out of sight. We paid $679/each for one-way tickets. Last night those identical seats were $1874/each, in early December! We've decided to spend the whole winter on island and just got return tickets with points.

Airfares like I'm seeing could kill tourism, especially for more budget-minded folks.

I think it is already affecting tourism everywhere. We own a side business in a tourist town and just within the last month we have really seen an effect. We usually get a lot of customers from Europe and Asia and we just aren't seeing them. Mostly only day-trippers and even they are dialing back spending.

Our December airfare is costing me $6000 for my family. Add to that the villa, travel, food etc......This year is locked in but if this keeps up it is going to get harder to justify that cost. I always thought our trips were a given-until now. And I can't be alone in that.

Airfares have probably peaked. The major airlines will catch up with the early pilot retirement programs they instituted with covid in 2020 and will start pushing more capacity into the system next spring. They will also cut back hiring in the fall which will allow the regionals to breath a bit but there are no long term solutions to that problem. The volume of pilot retirements will keep them fighting over a limited pool of pilots. The pool is limited because managements took advantage of pilot surpluses in past years and refused to pay anything close to a livable wage. Not to many people were interested in entering a profession where you are gone 18 days a month and making 21,000 a year. The regional pilot shortage is managements Frankenstein that they created. Now they have to live with it. Sadly it’s going to impact routes like SJU to EIS for a long time to come. With the recent large pay raises at the regionals more people will enter the profession but that’s 5 or 6 years out.

Quick update... they delivered our bags this morning at 5:00 am. Our dog barked, so I check the front door and someone was approaching with a flashlight. After changing my pants, we got the bags.

We had that same scenario in April and unfortunately did not get our bags until 14 days later fed ex to our door to Canada
Wishing you better luck . We used Jet Blue from SJU to Boston which code shares with Silver and they found them for us. silver was kinda useless .