ralfkrippner
Dec 5, 04, 5:25 pm
My first RTW trip is a good occasion to also do my first trip report here on flyertalk. I did some interesting flights before – and I even promised to do a report before. But time just did not allow then. As I had learned about those great RTW fares ex CAI on flyertalk, I think I owe the community… ;)
The report will be posted in stages, the first one posted from the Sheraton LAX a day before the end of the trip. I hope I will be finished within 2 weeks – be warned, it could get long… And please don’t be to hard on me on mistakes and grammar. If you are friendly to me I will later also post a link to some pictures ;)
Tuesday Nov. 30, 2004
I’ve not been ill for at least a year now. At one a clock I wake up feeling terribly sick. I was shivering, pain everywhere and I had to use the bathroom several times in a hurry. That felt like a strong cold. That must have been the one my wife got the last days, even if I kept distance. At five it got a bit better but I felt absolutely weak. At six I stood up and showered and nearly collapsed there. At this moment I would have cancelled my trip, would the rules of that ticket allow to change the first segment…
So I just got back to my bed, took some aspirin and hoped that my condition would stabilize. I called the office and told them that I will not show up as I had told before. Instead I did that calculations for the monthly bonus on my laptop from the bed…
At 9:30 I stood up again, everything very slowly, took a short shower, packed my rollaboard and a small bag and waited for my father to arrive and drive me to the airport.
LH 588 FRA-CAI, eco award, A330-300, 1815 miles, 4:00 hours, 13:35 on time, seat 30A
My first segment was booked as an award on Lufthansa, so I choose economy for the relatively short hop from FRA to CAI. Miles are earned too hard to be spent for premium tix on short flights… I checked in at the business checkin counter, got my boarding pass for my etix showing seat 30A on LH 588 – as the lady at telephone checkin reserved yesterday at precisely 5 p.m. – still my BP shows sequence number 6…
After a very quick security and passport check I went to the Senator lounge near Gate A52 which was quite full, connected my laptop to the WLAN that LH offers at their lounges, bought 30 minutes for 3.95€ and sent my calculations (finished on the way to the airport) for the bonus to the colleagues at the office. Whew – that again was a last-minute job…
I could not convince myself to eat something but drank a coke which usually helps me if I have problems with the stomach. I began to feel a bit better.
Boarding was announced to start at 12:50 for the 13:35 departure and so I left the lounge at 12:55 for the gate which was just next to the lounge. At ten past one I sat in my exit-row seat on a brand new A330. Business class was completey full (I couldn’t look into F) and economy only had a few open seats. But as LH since a few months does not put in your elite status on award tickets (BP just shows M/M) and only very few checkin agents can be convinced to not keep to those new rules and change that back to SEN if you ask them, the seat next to mine was not blocked. Another silly way to show your good customers how you reward loyalty, LH… But not really a problem on that short flight. I wonder if LH treats the new TOP customers (>600k status in 2 years only on LH, OS, UA) the same way?
Routing was directly past MUC, Split, Dubrovnik and Athens to CAI. Service was O.K., we got offered a hot meal and two beverage servings. I declined on any of those and just drank some water that I brought with me – together with some more aspirin and vitamin pills. They showed “Brother Love” on the screens in eco, a film I never heard of. But one good thing about entertainment aboard LH is “Lufthansa Radio”, a monthly changing production of actual hits presented by my favourite radio-moderator Evi Seibert – sexiest voice on earth… :)
We landed at 6:30 p.m. local time in CAI, it was already dark. Temperatures were announced to be around 18°C but it more felt like 5° to me in my current state, so I put on my jacket over my sweater also.
CAI is a strange airport. I didn’t see many planes and judging from the monitors there seem to be not much more than 20 flights a day. I saw an EK plane to DXB, a Saudi-Arabian plane and of course my LH flight that was about to leave to Khartoum in an hour - that pretty much was it. My seatmate, a business-traveller that connected from a UA flight in FRA, stayed on board to continue to KRT. The crew also left and was bound to Jeddah on the next day.
I remembered from another trip report here on flyertalk that you could buy those stamps for the immigration fee at the currency exchange booths (15 US$, some small change back in EGP) and so I did. The immigrations officer completed some details on the immigrations form in Arabic and let me enter Egypt. From that point on the airport was a complete zoo. I guess I was asked 30 times if I need help with my luggage (read: my rollaboard), a taxi, dining near the airport, directions or a shoe-shine. Thank you, no… I left the area and went to the departures hall nearby. Time now was 7:00 p.m.
My Kenya Airways (KQ) flight bound for Nairobi was scheduled to leave at 11:35 p.m. and still was the next departing int’l flight. You could only enter the checkin area through a security checkpoint and the officers there refused to let me enter as the checkin counter of KQ would only open at 9 p.m. Great… So I sat shivering in that cold and windy hall. Soon a nice American gentleman joined me there and we chatted a bit. He currently is based in JNB and visited a business partner in Alexandria. He heavily complained about the Egyptian driving style. I talked about my most frightening experience with Italian drivers in Naples and he said that compared to that Egypt plays in a completely different league. Oh my god!
Soon a KQ person started to prepare the checkin counters. While waiting I saw about 30 officers and airport personnel that had nothing to do at all besides smoking and drinking coffee. Hmm, that airport must produce a huge deficit… After waiting for 1,5 hours watching the KQ agent we were let into the checkin area. But despite that long time for preparations they had problems with the computers and could not check us in. For 30 minutes they tried and then gave up. I got a handwritten BP for CAI-NBO and NBO-CPT, just showing flight number, fareclass, date and seatnumber. Seat 2A on KQ 321. No name… Hmm… I hope they have noted my KLM FF-number in their system. Would KLM credit my miles based on that handwritten paper without a name on it… I also got a lounge voucher and passed the passport check again. The lounge consisted of a smoking and a non-smoking room. As I was the first one to enter the non-smoking room, an attendant switched on the lights and in the corner a sleepy man slowly climbed out of his sofa – he was in charge of the ‘bar’… I drank a water and visited the toilet, staffed with 5 (yes, five) people. But still it was dirty and there was no toilet paper available. It’s quite funny to see the difference to airports in Europe… After I went to the lounge again, my American buddy just arrived – with a computer printed BP. So at least my fears that we will depart late because they couldn’t print the pax manifest vanished. With only 45 minutes in NBO that would have been very bad… At 11:00 we left the lounge for our gate and judging from the many people there our flight will be full. At the gate we had to pass another security checkpoint, this one being very rigid. They won’t wand you manually when the metal detector beeps, you would have to remove addtl. Things like watches, belts and shoes until no beeps occur… I never had problems with my Clarks slippers, but here I had to put them off to satisfy the machine… KQ let eco pax board first and biz later and they only used the front door of that 737-700.
KQ 321 CAI-KRT-NBO, 737-700, 2189 miles, 6:15 hours, scheduled 23:25, on time. Seat 2A.
Configuration was a quite large first cabin with 2-2 seating and eco. The F cabin reminded me of the usual domestic flights in the USA. KQ only offers a quality intl. biz product on their 777 and 767 flights to LHR, AMS and BKK AFAIK. F was completely full and we left on time. The FA’s distributed headphones and nice red KQ amenity cases, filled with the usual goodies. As the meal service started I again refused any meal and drinks (I had one more bottle of water with me) and choose some more aspirin instead.
The service was very friendly and the meals looked very good. From the menu that I took with me the offerings were:
Hot Snack: Entrée Shiesh Tawook served with mushroom souce, fried potatoes Carrot sticks and sautéed broccoli OR Shredded beef, tomato concasse, brown rice, fresh assorted vegetables OR Mixed vegetables in oyster sauce and noodles.
Dessert: Black Forest cake with berry sauce
For KRT-NBO: Continental breakfast: Fresh fruit salad, assorted fruit joghurt, onion&cheese roll, croissant, butter and preserves.
The report will be posted in stages, the first one posted from the Sheraton LAX a day before the end of the trip. I hope I will be finished within 2 weeks – be warned, it could get long… And please don’t be to hard on me on mistakes and grammar. If you are friendly to me I will later also post a link to some pictures ;)
Tuesday Nov. 30, 2004
I’ve not been ill for at least a year now. At one a clock I wake up feeling terribly sick. I was shivering, pain everywhere and I had to use the bathroom several times in a hurry. That felt like a strong cold. That must have been the one my wife got the last days, even if I kept distance. At five it got a bit better but I felt absolutely weak. At six I stood up and showered and nearly collapsed there. At this moment I would have cancelled my trip, would the rules of that ticket allow to change the first segment…
So I just got back to my bed, took some aspirin and hoped that my condition would stabilize. I called the office and told them that I will not show up as I had told before. Instead I did that calculations for the monthly bonus on my laptop from the bed…
At 9:30 I stood up again, everything very slowly, took a short shower, packed my rollaboard and a small bag and waited for my father to arrive and drive me to the airport.
LH 588 FRA-CAI, eco award, A330-300, 1815 miles, 4:00 hours, 13:35 on time, seat 30A
My first segment was booked as an award on Lufthansa, so I choose economy for the relatively short hop from FRA to CAI. Miles are earned too hard to be spent for premium tix on short flights… I checked in at the business checkin counter, got my boarding pass for my etix showing seat 30A on LH 588 – as the lady at telephone checkin reserved yesterday at precisely 5 p.m. – still my BP shows sequence number 6…
After a very quick security and passport check I went to the Senator lounge near Gate A52 which was quite full, connected my laptop to the WLAN that LH offers at their lounges, bought 30 minutes for 3.95€ and sent my calculations (finished on the way to the airport) for the bonus to the colleagues at the office. Whew – that again was a last-minute job…
I could not convince myself to eat something but drank a coke which usually helps me if I have problems with the stomach. I began to feel a bit better.
Boarding was announced to start at 12:50 for the 13:35 departure and so I left the lounge at 12:55 for the gate which was just next to the lounge. At ten past one I sat in my exit-row seat on a brand new A330. Business class was completey full (I couldn’t look into F) and economy only had a few open seats. But as LH since a few months does not put in your elite status on award tickets (BP just shows M/M) and only very few checkin agents can be convinced to not keep to those new rules and change that back to SEN if you ask them, the seat next to mine was not blocked. Another silly way to show your good customers how you reward loyalty, LH… But not really a problem on that short flight. I wonder if LH treats the new TOP customers (>600k status in 2 years only on LH, OS, UA) the same way?
Routing was directly past MUC, Split, Dubrovnik and Athens to CAI. Service was O.K., we got offered a hot meal and two beverage servings. I declined on any of those and just drank some water that I brought with me – together with some more aspirin and vitamin pills. They showed “Brother Love” on the screens in eco, a film I never heard of. But one good thing about entertainment aboard LH is “Lufthansa Radio”, a monthly changing production of actual hits presented by my favourite radio-moderator Evi Seibert – sexiest voice on earth… :)
We landed at 6:30 p.m. local time in CAI, it was already dark. Temperatures were announced to be around 18°C but it more felt like 5° to me in my current state, so I put on my jacket over my sweater also.
CAI is a strange airport. I didn’t see many planes and judging from the monitors there seem to be not much more than 20 flights a day. I saw an EK plane to DXB, a Saudi-Arabian plane and of course my LH flight that was about to leave to Khartoum in an hour - that pretty much was it. My seatmate, a business-traveller that connected from a UA flight in FRA, stayed on board to continue to KRT. The crew also left and was bound to Jeddah on the next day.
I remembered from another trip report here on flyertalk that you could buy those stamps for the immigration fee at the currency exchange booths (15 US$, some small change back in EGP) and so I did. The immigrations officer completed some details on the immigrations form in Arabic and let me enter Egypt. From that point on the airport was a complete zoo. I guess I was asked 30 times if I need help with my luggage (read: my rollaboard), a taxi, dining near the airport, directions or a shoe-shine. Thank you, no… I left the area and went to the departures hall nearby. Time now was 7:00 p.m.
My Kenya Airways (KQ) flight bound for Nairobi was scheduled to leave at 11:35 p.m. and still was the next departing int’l flight. You could only enter the checkin area through a security checkpoint and the officers there refused to let me enter as the checkin counter of KQ would only open at 9 p.m. Great… So I sat shivering in that cold and windy hall. Soon a nice American gentleman joined me there and we chatted a bit. He currently is based in JNB and visited a business partner in Alexandria. He heavily complained about the Egyptian driving style. I talked about my most frightening experience with Italian drivers in Naples and he said that compared to that Egypt plays in a completely different league. Oh my god!
Soon a KQ person started to prepare the checkin counters. While waiting I saw about 30 officers and airport personnel that had nothing to do at all besides smoking and drinking coffee. Hmm, that airport must produce a huge deficit… After waiting for 1,5 hours watching the KQ agent we were let into the checkin area. But despite that long time for preparations they had problems with the computers and could not check us in. For 30 minutes they tried and then gave up. I got a handwritten BP for CAI-NBO and NBO-CPT, just showing flight number, fareclass, date and seatnumber. Seat 2A on KQ 321. No name… Hmm… I hope they have noted my KLM FF-number in their system. Would KLM credit my miles based on that handwritten paper without a name on it… I also got a lounge voucher and passed the passport check again. The lounge consisted of a smoking and a non-smoking room. As I was the first one to enter the non-smoking room, an attendant switched on the lights and in the corner a sleepy man slowly climbed out of his sofa – he was in charge of the ‘bar’… I drank a water and visited the toilet, staffed with 5 (yes, five) people. But still it was dirty and there was no toilet paper available. It’s quite funny to see the difference to airports in Europe… After I went to the lounge again, my American buddy just arrived – with a computer printed BP. So at least my fears that we will depart late because they couldn’t print the pax manifest vanished. With only 45 minutes in NBO that would have been very bad… At 11:00 we left the lounge for our gate and judging from the many people there our flight will be full. At the gate we had to pass another security checkpoint, this one being very rigid. They won’t wand you manually when the metal detector beeps, you would have to remove addtl. Things like watches, belts and shoes until no beeps occur… I never had problems with my Clarks slippers, but here I had to put them off to satisfy the machine… KQ let eco pax board first and biz later and they only used the front door of that 737-700.
KQ 321 CAI-KRT-NBO, 737-700, 2189 miles, 6:15 hours, scheduled 23:25, on time. Seat 2A.
Configuration was a quite large first cabin with 2-2 seating and eco. The F cabin reminded me of the usual domestic flights in the USA. KQ only offers a quality intl. biz product on their 777 and 767 flights to LHR, AMS and BKK AFAIK. F was completely full and we left on time. The FA’s distributed headphones and nice red KQ amenity cases, filled with the usual goodies. As the meal service started I again refused any meal and drinks (I had one more bottle of water with me) and choose some more aspirin instead.
The service was very friendly and the meals looked very good. From the menu that I took with me the offerings were:
Hot Snack: Entrée Shiesh Tawook served with mushroom souce, fried potatoes Carrot sticks and sautéed broccoli OR Shredded beef, tomato concasse, brown rice, fresh assorted vegetables OR Mixed vegetables in oyster sauce and noodles.
Dessert: Black Forest cake with berry sauce
For KRT-NBO: Continental breakfast: Fresh fruit salad, assorted fruit joghurt, onion&cheese roll, croissant, butter and preserves.