TravellinHusker

When the Fairmont Friends and Family rate came about earlier this year, I looked into many of their resorts and found an unbeatable rate at the Fairmont Masai Mara Safari Club in Kenya. With my other half, we decided to go for a bit of safari. Then two months beforehand, my boss and her other half asked if they could tag along as well. When I explained about the special rate, she went to the Fairmont site and decided she wanted to go to the new Fairmont Zanzibar for a week also. My partner decided we had to go to Cairo as well. So, what started as a week in Kenya ended up being two couples travelling all over Africa! We used *A miles to fly on a C class award. My boss’s routing was VCE-VIE-CAI-DAR-ZNZ-NBO-Ngerende-NBO-ZRH-VCE, and my routing was VCE-VIE-CAI-LXR-CAI-NBO-Ngerende-NBO-ZRH-VCE.

Austrian Airlines 528 VCE-VIE
805am – 920am
Dash 8

I did OLCI the day before and had no problems at all getting the desired seats for this first flight and the connecting flight in VIE to CAI. We boarded on-time, zero problems, took off and a light breakfast was served by the friendly flight attendants from Tyrolean Airways. Then in no time, we were at the airport in Vienna. This is the last mention of a positive international flight on a scheduled carrier for the rest of the trip. The rest of the flights varied from hellish to downright cruel.

Austrian Airlines 863 VIE-CAI
10:35am – 3:10pm
A320
We made our way over to the gate for the flight to CAI. I had watched the video on the Austrian website about the Premium Service cabins and their offerings. It all looked quite nice. But to my surprise when we went through security we were met by a woman with a mobile kiosk who advised us that the A320 with Premium Service would not be flying the route today and instead we had a regular intra-European A320. She handed us each a voucher for EUR100 for a future OS-only flight and told us to sign the waiver or receive no compensation at all. She was rather rude and her English was very bad. I asked to speak to the supervisor. A very nice young man, Thomas, came over and introduced himself as the Flight Manager. He explained that the flight was heavily overbooked and the Premium Service A320 had fewer seats in Y and the regular A320 had much more, so this was the reason for the substitution. As there were only 6 pax in C class, they decided to swap aircraft. Grrrrr…
Upon boarding we were greeted by the FA’s who apologised for the aircraft swap and said they would do whatever was necessary to make us comfortable. Needless to say with a 4 hour flight on an intra-EU C class seat, my comfort was going to be limited. The FA’s did not do pre-flight drinks or offer anything at all. However, I must say that I found the food offerings to be nice. First there were the hot towels served on a silver tray followed by interesting cocktails made with vodka. I selected the raspberry cocktail and it was very good. There was also a lime cocktail that my partner had and remarked it was delicious. Next we had Arabian Mezze consisting of 5 small dishes offering hummous, tabouleh, baba ghannoush, tzatziki and smoked perch with a tomato chutney. The main course was a choice between Filet Mignon with sauteed vegetables, Grilled Chicken Breast with lemon sauce and capers, and Eggplant Moussaka. Finally, the desserts were 3 different interpretations of baklava. Each one made with different nuts and in different forms. Very good. We were given Austrian Airlines SkySpa amenity kits and the FAs really went out of their way to make sure our glasses were never empty, but the seats were horrible and the IFE was non-existent. Ok, yes, those stupid practical joke tv show programs were on the overhead monitors, but how many times can you really laugh at a naked jogger or a nun who loudly farts in public? Grrrrrrrr..
We arrived into Cairo’s new Terminal 3. Ok, first impression: How can a terminal open for less than 2 months be so filthy in such a short time? Globs of gum stuck on to the floor and ground in. Barely working air conditioning (except on the jetway. It worked great there.)
Passport Control was madness as there were only 5 lanes open and at least 500 people crammed into the area. Hot, sweaty, and the aroma that can only be described as “uniquely Cairo” greeted us to Egypt.
Luckily, as we descended the escalator into the baggage claim area, we saw our last name on a piece of paper and a rather handsome, nice fellow warmly greeted us and helped us find our bags and ultimately escort us out of the baggage hall and into the oppressively hot, yet dry, heat of the summer Egyptian sun.