I just bit the bullet and ticketed on AA for our annual February trip. As I have posted before, I just couldn't handle effectively losing a day with the 8am AA flight, so here's what we came up with:

inbound: American: EWR/SJU/BON (leave 8:25am/arrive 8pm)
outbound: Divi: BON/CUR, then American: CUR/MIA/EWR (leave 1:15pm/arrive 11pm)

The price on American is just about the same as a traditional RT to/from BON, with just the added cost of the Divi flight - seems to be a fair trade for 6 more hours in paradise, plus we get to dive the day before we leave.

The connection to/from Aruba or Curacao seemed to put us into BON just about the same time as the AA flight, plus we won't have to watch the sunrise over the port of Newark. (I'm also nervous about BE to/from Aruba, so that knocked that option out) Given the possibility of weather-related flight delays, I wanted to be ticketed straight-through to BON on the way down. Getting stuck in either CUR or MIA on the way home doesn't sound too bad (sure beats my 8 hours in MoBay this year).

Just one person's solution to life w/o AJ...

Sue... Well here's another solution out of Newark NJ. We also go down every Feb..Just booked Continental on a NON STOP flight directly into Aruba.
From there out of Aruba @ 17:00 & in Bonaire 17:40.
Outbound; depart Bonaire 11:00AM to Aruba non stop to Newark arive 15:30.. Additional cost is the Bonairexcell leg @ $170.

Vince,

I did look at that, but RT is now $1200 on Continental alone. Notwithstanding this fare, BE has me worried and I wasn't going to budget a charter from Aruba to Bonaire. I know my plan isn't perfect, but it works...

Sue, Was that $1200.00 per person? I tried four different set of dates on Continental's web site including two involving weekend travel, the highest price I found was $770.00 per person.

Sarge is still on patrol this afternoon

Sue: I got R/T tickets on Continental @ $660.
However I'm leaving on a Thurs & coming back 2 weeks later..

yes - $1200pp. Happy President's Week! when you need 4 tickets that's a bit steep.

I actually had a pleasant surprise when there was a discount for a child's ticket on AA.

Sue, that is the R/T we used except our departure was from Atlanta. Everything worked just fine and the added time in Bonaire was worth the extra expense. Another note, the airport is not crowded when you leave. We are doing the same again for 2006.

Sue, yikes! I thought a grand a piece for four of us in March was steep...(the kids keep asking when we are going back...well...when the penny jar is full again! LOL!)

Sue, now I understand the $1,200.00 pp fare. OUCH!!

I feel your pain. We have been devoted Air Jamaica travelers in the past, but since that option is gone (for now), I just booked the AA flights through SJU with the much-despised 8:00pm arrival and 8:00am departure. To make-up the lost day, we are going to stay for 10 days rather than a week. We found that by booking AA flights on weekdays and avoiding weekend flights, the cost saving on air tickets (almost!) offset the extra hotel costs.

Just cancelled our AJ flt for July and re-booked on AA - Also bit the bullet with the long day. But was surprised that we got Business class from BWI for $ 1092/pp rt. I found the price was less traveling not on the weekend. It was also cheaper to do the direct return from SJU to BWI rather than an earlier flight that stopped in Miami. There is always the possibility of lost luggage when changing planes. You have to play around with dates and flights- there is no consistency.