[Liv7301]

Here is an FYI on Airtran. As of Labor Day weekend Airtran will discontinue flights into Freeport, Bahamas. (FPO) My husband and I have a Blackbeard trip booked for November (I have a thread here on the forums about it) and were using Airtran as a convenient way to fly in from DFW. We were notified in early July via email that they would be discontinuing service and gave us two options: change our tickets to other destinations without a fee or get a full refund. We ended up getting a full refund and then rebooking for tickets from DFW to Ft. Lauderdale, which conveniently were about $210 dollars cheaper. However, we will now have to book separate tickets from Ft. Lauderdale to Freeport via either Continental or BahamasAir. When it is all said and done it will end up running us another $300 more than originally planned even after the savings from rebooking, which isn't bad, but is annoying nontheless.

I wanted to put this out for public since there are so many nice diving opportunities and liveaboards in that area and this is a big change in how many of us will get there. There used to be a ferry from Ft. Lauderdale to Freeport but that ended in 2005. (Just to fake you out though the website is still up.) There is an inter-Bahamas ferry that will take you from island to island but does not connect to Florida at all. One option would be to try and fly into another airport, like Nassau for example, and then take the island ferry. That didn't work for us because times and locations didn't work out to get us to the boat on time for the start of the trip, but it is a general possibility.