Don’t miss the boat at cruise time

Question: I was scheduled to take a Mediterranean cruise, so I scheduled a United flight from LAX to arrive at 12:15 p.m. at London Heathrow for a 12:30 pickup by Princess Cruises. My flight was delayed 3 1/2 hours because of weather, so United found me a seat on an American flight, which also was delayed. I called Princess, and the agent told me not to take the flight and wondered why I had cut it so close. But Princess had made all the arrangements for me through my travel agent. Bottom line: I stayed home, and Princess gave me a credit for a cruise that I don’t really want to take anymore. What should I do?

--Marcia S. Glinsky, Los Angeles

Answer: Chalk it up to one of life’s lessons and take the cruise.

Karen Candy, Princess manager of media relations, tells me that even if you had missed the ship in Southampton, England, you would have been in Princess’ hands. “If she had taken the delayed flight, we would’ve been keeping track of the late arrival time and transferred her to the ship accordingly,” she said in an e-mail.

But that’s really not the point. Instead, it’s more a matter of:

* Booking any flight into Heathrow.

* Booking any flight into Heathrow during the busy summer months.

* Booking any flight into Heathrow during the busy summer months with a travel agent who should have known better.

If you consider that Heathrow is handling about 20 million more passengers a year than it was designed for, that weather in London is often lousy and that airlines’ on-time performance is less than stellar, that’s a trifecta of fate-tempting.

So we can’t say this too many times: You must be your own best advocate, and part of that is questioning authority if something seems off.

My favorite economics professor used to say, “Listen to your intuition. It’s your experience at work.”

If you trust your instincts -- and you arrive in a day or even two before -- we can almost guarantee smooth sailing.

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com.