alisa23

I wanted to warn everybody going to Ecuador and especially to Galapagos that flights to Quito are often delayed (by a day). Plan for spending at least 2 nights in Quito before your cruise if you don't want to miss your cruise.
There were 20 people on our boat in Galapagos. At least half of them had problems with their fligths. 4 of them had to miss the first 3 days of the cruise because they did not plan for extra days in Quito.

Patty

Could you be more specific? Flights from where? Is this a recent development and is it specifically related to Quito airport or Guayaquil also? When were you there? We were there last May and everything appeared to be running fine. We flew AA which has 2 flights a day from Miami. Others we met flew Continental from Houston. No one mentioned any problems with their flights.

Flying in a few days early isn't a bad idea anyway.

alisa23

All of my experience are with flying from different points in the US through Miami to Quito on American Airlines. I was there in December. Most of flights departed in the evening from Miami and many of them were postponed until the next morning. One flight instead of landing in Quito landed in Guayaquil and people had to sleep on the benches in the airport because the airline could not find enough hotel rooms for everybody.
Hopefully the situation has improved but even then it makes sense to be careful about scheduling your flights.

Patty

What reason did AA give for the flight delay/postponement to the following day? Was it weather, mechanical, or some other issue? What was the reason given for the diversion to Guayaquil?

alisa23

In the majority of cases, AA said that it was too foggy to land in Quito. I am not sure how they could know at 6pm that it will be too foggy to land at 11pm, when flights that departed at 4pm landed just fine at 9pm. For 4 people who did not make it to the cruise on time, AA canceled one of their flights to Miami and could not find any other flight for them on the same day.