On board the Viking Forseti at Bordeaux the service was excellent, however our journeys, planned and arranged by Viking from Birmingham airport to Bordeaux and return via Amsterdam, were horrendous. We had the impression from Viking that there was no direct flight available from Birmingham to Bordeaux on Saturdays and thus suffered the journeys, starting from home at 2.00am and eventually arriving at the vessel a 4.00pm (5.00pm French time). On returning we left the vessel at 1.45pm and arrived at Bordeaux airport at about 2.15pm. Our flight back to Amsterdam was due to take off at 4.55pm. During this time waiting at Bordeaux we noticed that there was a direct flight from Bordeaux to Birmingham at 3.25pm. The flight was Air France flight number AF6530. It appeared that the Air France flight had combined with FlyBe flight BE1843 and utilised the FlyBe aircraft. This flight would have arrived in Birmingham at about 5.00pm(4.00pm) British time). Instead we had to go to Amsterdam and be subject to another three hour wait and yet another security check before finally arriving home at 11.00pm. With a little more investigation by Viking into the most convenient route to travel the stress and inconvenience of the journeys could be minimized. The other point we should like to make concerns the information in the Viking Itinerary Booklet (page 4) relating to "On-line check in" which states:- "This facility is available 24 hours before your flight departure time when specific seats can be selected---etc". We checked the availability of seats 48 hours before the flight from Birmingham and found that a large number of seats had already been booked and in particular the only remaining two seats together on the Bordeaux to Amsterdam flight included one seat with extra leg room for which we had to pay an additional £10.70 payment. The seats can therefore be selected at some time before the the flight and the statement in this Brochure is incorrect and misleading