MilesBuzz! - Help with Africa trip - can we use miles?

We have booked an Africa safari in Tanzania in Feb. 08 but the travel portion is very complex. I have booked 1 way to Tanzania on Virgin to arrive 1 week earlier than our safari for volunteer work. My husband will arrive 8 days later for our safari (in Tanzania) We are coming out of San Francisco. My husband has business in Paris after our safari, so we will stop there for 4 days before returning home. We have many AMEX points and United miles. Is it possible to use either or both to book our trip home (through Paris)? Should we simply work with a travel agent?:confused:

possibly, but it's complicated...


On United
--you'd have to abandon the one way.

Then:
you'd probably have two choices

--fly thru zurich (on swiss) to kenya then take one of the shuttle buses to arusha, returning to nairobi (by the way, the shuttle buses are easy to catch at take about 5 hours to get you to arusha), or flying to dar et salaam, tanzania and take the long ride to arusha and back. Then see if united would let you stop off in zurich (probably) or paris on the return.
--fly thru south africa to tanzania

Getting frequent flyer space to south africa and paris has been difficult.

The other alternative is probably to turn the amex miles into continental and then trying to get northwest and klm to fly directly to tanzania. There's a flight thru amsterdam. Again coming back the question is whether they'd let you stop off in amsterdam or Paris.

there might be other choices on virgin atlantic.

I don't believe either airline offers one way stuff, but i'm not totally familiar with amex membership miles, or with nwa's program.

in any case, you'd end up calling united or continental to do it, i believe. A travel agent would not help

When I booked my trip to Tanzania a couple of years ago, I looked into the possibilities for using miles. What I ended up doing is booking a roundtrip on Virgin Atlantic SFO-LHR (in Upper Class) with Amex Points (transferred 80,000 points to Virgin). I then nested a roundtrip to Arusha (LHR-JRO) with Kenya Airways, which I paid for (~$1000). You could use either your UA miles or Amex points to get yourself to Europe.

In general, you're going to have to fly through Europe to get to Tanzania - I don't believe there are any direct flights from North America to Tanzania, though there are some to South Africa.

So, I wasn't able to use frequent flier miles to get myself all the way to Tanzania, but I got myself half way there. The major airlines that will fly into Arusha are KLM and BA. Alternatively, you could fly into Nairobi, and then book a short flight into Arusha or take the all-day bus. I don't know what major airlines fly into Nairobi, but there may be more than what fly into Arusha.

the bus to arusha isn't an all day bus. It picks you up from several nairobi hotels out 8 a.m, arrives in arusha about 1 p.m. There's a second one that leaves like 2 p.m.

but there are several companies that do the shuttle bus. impala is one.

i did united frequent flyer to kenya last year and paid for the arusha bus, which was I believe $20 each way. the flight from nairobi to tanzania was like $160 each way.

if you can get united or northwest to let you stop off in europe on the way back, i'm sure that the cheapest thing to do is to book a separate paris to wherever in europe round trip (zurich or amsterdam)

I was in Kenya over the summer, took American to London, then to Nirobi, took some domestic flights (kenya air) to Egypt then to Boston then home to Los Angeles. American was a pleasure to deal with. I wanted to get to Paris originally but could not figure out how to do it.

We have booked an Africa safari in Tanzania in Feb. 08 but the travel portion is very complex. I have booked 1 way to Tanzania on Virgin to arrive 1 week earlier than our safari for volunteer work. My husband will arrive 8 days later for our safari (in Tanzania) We are coming out of San Francisco. My husband has business in Paris after our safari, so we will stop there for 4 days before returning home. We have many AMEX points and United miles. Is it possible to use either or both to book our trip home (through Paris)? Should we simply work with a travel agent?:confused:

If possible, I'd go back to square one and cancel the one way. An option would be a RT on UA/Partners SFO-NBO that allow a stop in CDG. Other options, and possibly easier, would be RT SFO-CDG combined with CDG-NBO as a second trip. Consider London or other European cities as an option as they can be reached fairly easily by train.

Try the Qantas site to check award availabilty. Don't forget creative routing such as DAR-JBO-CDG for awards.

I recently booked, for a trip next May, JFK-FRA-CPT-JNB-VFA-JNB-FRA-IAD-JFK using US miles. Don't see why you couldn't do something similar with UA miles (I am flying on Singapore Air, South African Air, and Lufthansa). VFA should get you pretty close to Tansania.

The CDG stopover adds a wrinkle, but you could always buy 1 ticket to CDG and then get an award from there to Africa.

When I used to work in Tanzania 10 years ago, the one way flights on British Air cost the same as the round trip to California. Have you checked on how much your one way cost compared to the roundtrip you need?
You are going to have a trip of a life time on Safari. Safari mean "Journey" in Swahili.