Originally Posted by
drdavidge
I'd really like to fly over in lay-flat business class
I've done that on CO (RIP) to LHR and then Kenya Airways to NBO in Y. The Kenya Airways flight can be completely during the day, so lay-flat doesn't mean much. We did KE LHR-NBO in the day, landing at NBO at night and spent one night in downtown Nairobi. Nairobi-Aursha-Moshi bus service rounded us up in the morning.
Losing your check-in baggage along the way to Africa is a real concern in my mind. We intentionally chose to go through LHR in order to recover our bags there before checking-in for our KE connecting flight.
I know you can't really fly into Arusha directly
Yes you can. Airport is ARK. See response post #4 above.
maybe a bus from Nairobi or Kilimanjaro to there.
There's buses from NBO. If you land at JRO, your tour operator would typically arrange a pick-up for you.
I've looked at route maps, but I am a little overwhelmed with the options available on airlines...Some interesting stopover cities we were looking at were Amsterdam (ideally)
AMS means KL. I've done LHR-AMS-JRO on KL with CO award redemption (RIP again). The KL flight is a daytime flight landing at JRO well after dark. KL then continues JRO-DAR-AMS arriving at AMS early in the morning. Jet-lag aside, Heineken on tap at AMS is quite a treat! If you go downtown to Amsterdam, load up on cash. A number of Amsterdam establishments are cash-only, and of course a number of ATM's there are non-functional. We had to dine at the golden arches one night because that's all that we could afford with the limited euros that we had.
For LHR-AMS-JRO, KL managed to lose our checked-in luggage. Three days after arriving, KL's people intercepted us on a highway to Ngorongoro crater with the bags.
Here are my current point balances:
300k Chase
105k American Express
100k United
380k AA (various accounts)
75k BA
37k SPG
*A could potentially get you to JRO on ET. IMO, read up on ADD. I think ADD makes a good substitute for CAI with historical items especially if you get some significant but not terrible distance out of ADD. I would not go to Egypt these days. If you're lucky, you could try ET's 787 IAD-ADD service. One would think that LX would be an option for ZRH-DAR, but ZRH-DAR is done by LX's codeshare Edelweiss Air which provides zero earning/redemption for any *A other than LX itself.
DAR is my least favorite airport. I wouldn't go through there if I were you.
NBO was quite okay, but then it recently burned down, so I don't know how it is now. Pole. It was cool to see giraffes loitering near the tarmac. I hope the fire didn't hurt the twigas.
Safari njema!