Grand Canyon Airplane Tours |
Save Hundreds of Dollars by Reading Your Grand Canyon Air Tour's Cancellation Policy
One thing that travelers overlook when booking a Grand Canyon airplane tour is the cancellation policy. I more than understand that reading the "fine print" is a time-consuming nuisance. But failure to do so could cost you hundreds of dollars. There are also instances where brokers (e.g. "big box" travel sites) revise the trip's original terms and conditions to best suit their business model. I'm not saying this is par for the course, but it does happen, and it behooves you to break out the magnifying glass in order to read between the lines. Honestly, the last thing you need when you're on vacation is miscommunication with a travel supplier.
Here on GrandCanyonAirplaneTours.net, I've done a lot of the heavy lifting for you. For each of our top 3 air tour companies, I've personally called them up and queried them about their cancellation policies. Like the superior businesses that they are, they patiently educated me about their stand on folks who either rightfully change their mind or let the weather do if for them. Take a look...
- You Cancel - Get your all your money back if you do it 24 hours before your due to fly.
- You Reschedule - No penalty or fees if done 24 hours before.
- Weather Cancel - Opt for a full refund or take the next flight that best meets your schedule.
- You Cancel - Full refund if done 48 hours ahead of time.
- You Reschedule - No charge if done 24 hours beforehand.
- Weather Cancel - No charge if no flight is able to be rescheduled.
- You Cancel - If done 24 hours prior to take off, you get a 100% refund. Easy as that.
- You Reschedule - No charge if you do it 24 hours before you're scheduled to fly.
- Weather Cancel - Two choices: Take a full refund or get rescheduled on the next flight (or a day of your choice).
It's pretty straightforward stuff. Just make sure when you book that you commit the cancel terms to memory and abide by them. Doing that is the most pro-active way to protect your travel investment.
West Rim or South Rim?
This is a question aimed only at the Las Vegas traveler who gets to choose rims (there are no flights from the South Rim to the West Rim and vice versa). In a nutshell, go to the West Rim if you are looking for thrills and adventure and to the South Rim if you are looking for natural scenic beauty.
More specifically...
The West Rim, which is just a 30-minute flight from Las Vegas, is famous for two things:
- The Grand Canyon Skywalk
- It's the only place in the entire National Park where helicopters can fly below the rim and land at the bottom!
The Skywalk, which was open to the public in 2007, is the world's largest glass cantilevered bridge. The neat thing about it is you can walk 70 feet past the edge. If you look under our feet, you'll see the bottom of the canyon, which is 4,000 feet below you!
The helicopter rides here are phenomenal. It takes a chopper about 15 minutes to make the descent to the bottom. Once there, folks usually explore the base and the banks of the Colorado River, the waterway that cut through the Earth's crust to form a gorge that runs for more than 270 miles.
Heli tours can be extended to include a Colorado River boat ride, which I whole-heartedly endorse as there's nothing more spectacular than floating the river, looking up at gargantuan cliffs and listening to the wildlife that have claimed the bottom as their home.
Or you can fly off to the South Rim. This is a 60-minute flight. Like West Rim airplane tours, you'll go over Lake Mead, Hoover Dam and the Mojave Desert, before heading east using the canyon as a guideline to the National Park airport in Tusayan, AZ. This flight segment alone amounts to seeing up to 75 percent of the canyon!
The basic South Rim air tour from Las Vegas includes a 2.5-hour bus tour inside the Park. But the one that really grabs folks' attention is the deluxe version of this tour. It comes with a 30-minute rim-to-rim helicopter tour that, among other things, goes through the Dragoon Corridor, the widest and deepest section of the canyon.
South Rim
Visitors in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Sedona and Flagstaff usually self-drive to the South Rim to take an airplane tour. Is it worth the drive? Absolutely! It's a scenic roadtrip and I know many people who make it an overnight in the Park (if you want to stay in a Park lodge, book your rooms ASAP) or in Sedona.
The primary airplane tour here is one that keeps your airborne for 50 minutes. In that time, you'll fly over:
- Kaibab National Forest
- The South Rim
- Desert Watchtower
- Zuni Corridor
- Imperial Point (highest point in the Park)
- The North Rim
- Dragoon Corridor
You'll also get a good look at the Painted Desert and the Navajo Indian Reservation.
The other airplane tour that I'm excited about includes a day of smooth-water rafting. First, you fly from Grand Canyon National Park Airport to Page, AZ, deplane, transfer to a Jeep for a 4x4 tour of Antelope Canyon (a.k.a. the slot canyons), then head to a dock at the base of Glen Canyon Dam for a 15-mile float trip to Lee's Ferry. This trip is fun for everyone -- even kids four years of age and younger.
Early Bird Gets the Worm
Canyon airplane tours are very popular and during peak travel months (March through November) sell out with regularity. You are now part of an elite group of travelers who know this so make sure to act on it. I suggest to friends, family and readers that they book their flights no less than a week in advance. Avoid making your flight arrangements at the destination -- they will cost you more and you most likely won't get the time and date you want.
Finding Deals
I think it will come as no surprise when I tell you that the best deals on airplane tours are online. That said, do not purchase your trip from a "big box" travel site like Priceline, Expedia, TravelZoo, Kayak and the like. Those companies are brokers and basically are unloading whatever the tour suppliers are giving them, which is usually cancelled seats and non-peak flight times.
What you want to do is go direct to the tour suppliers. These are the companies that own and operate the tours and set the pricing and parse out trips to the big travel sites mentioned above. By going direct to the source, you will save money, and I'm not talking a couple bucks, but in the range of 15-30 percent off! Without a doubt, you'll find the best deals on their websites but in order to get them, you must complete the transaction online. Do that and you'll patting yourself on the back.
Click Here for Airplane Tour Prices & Flight Times
I hope this article about Grand Canyon air tour cancellation policies helped. For further research on airplane rides, go here. Or, if you're ready to book, go here for my top 3 companies.
Have a GRAND day,
