Sure they do... 135K in J and 180K in F I think. With the new rules about combining carriers there's a bunch of options - LX through ZRH, IB through MAD/BCN, AA across the pond and then BA LHR-CAI, or if you're really clever, AA/AS to YYZ/YUL/YVR/MEX/BGI/etc and then BA the rest of the way. The only thing you're not allowed to do is fly USA-UK on BA.

Are there any cities in Europe from which one can get a cheap flight to CAI?

Also, how does one go about getting a RTW ticket through the CAI BA office?

(a) none came to hand when I searched
(b)
1. Book your trip (or assuming you won't mind paying US$75 to make it real, a straw-man with a firm first flight, date and destination) with the BA RTW desk nearest you.
2. Fax Ms. Sobhi in CAI, giving her your record locator. It helps her, since she apparently has very few electronic tools, if you know what you're doing and demonstrate it by including a nicely printed list of your itinerary, showing which places are transits and which are stopovers (matters for taxes), and a count of segments in each continent and the total count. She can do all that too, but will appreciate that you've done your homework.

3. Pray that if a price increase is imminent that she will be willing to deal with your request in a timely manner. This won't be true if several dozen FT'ers are ahead of you for her attention, or likely if your start date is too far in the future. I don't know how far ahead she'll sell tickets (she obviously has to account for them in her safe until you pick them up). In my case she waited many weeks (last spring) before selling me a ticket, even though I gently prodded her to sell the thing to me, not wanting to bet on the future rate of exchange.

My present guess is that if the increase is next week you won't make it.

johnep1, when i started my latest RTW in Oct, i used a 90K biz class award with an open jaw. dca-ord-yyz-lhr-cai on aa and ba. then flew cai-lhr as 1st segment of rtw and ended the award with a lhr-dub-bwi. 1-way tickets from cairo back to the usa are cheap to buy when you end in cairo, about $400 via aa and its codeshares.

Depends on your definition of cheap. I got a flight with Swiss from LHR via ZUR for about £190; Lufthansa have been going as low as £160.

i paid about 140 pounds for austrian.. i found it good as the actual time travelled in the air was nearly the same as BA direct
booked it through lastminute.com

If don't mind having a one way ticket to CAI, you can get thereusing a Oneworld Award ticket for 80K miles in J and 100K in F. I am doing this in February and am routing JFK-DUB-LHR on Aer Lingus and LHR-CAI on BA. I played around with a first class routing of JFK-MAD on IB and MAD-LHR-CAI on BA.

I will probably get a cheap ticket ex-CAI for my return, but that is a little less than a year from now, so I'll cross that bridge at the right time.

Two bits of bad news:

OWE prices ex CAI are definitely increasing by around 40-50% from 12 January.

Worse still is the directive that BA management has handed down: no tickets are to be issued before 12 January unless the customer is able to collect and pay for in person.

Be interested to hear reports from anyone who has found AA or IB doing the same thing (OW members tend not to act in isolation).

It strikes me that BA has really shot itself in the foot on this one: sure there´s less revenue for tickets issued ex CAI, but think of all of the pax who wouldn´t otherwise consider buying premium ONEs.

Anyone have any CAI contacts?

That s*cks monkey b*lls.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif


On a more positive note, I received my ticket from EMECO travel today (AA's CAI GSA)and all looks in order. I feel bad for EMECO. They are a very customer friendly and service oriented operation and I hate for them to loose this extra business.

Got a fare quote from AA for ex-Cairo today, and either there has been an error somewhere or AA has jumped the gun and increased fares before the due date.

A DONE4 has jumped from around US3800 to US$5090.

Hopefully AA in CAI can sort this out after they receive my query next week.

FYI EMECO was originally the GSA for TWA. They had hoped that after AA tookover that there would a surge of travel only to find out that AA canceled the route to Egypt. Still the people are great to work with and I am sure they will continue getting business irrespective of OWE fare increases. I know I would still patronise their services.

ONEWORLD fares have nothing to do with Egptian tourism. How many people here who bought such tickets actually spent more than 2 days there and contributed monetarily towards the local economy?



[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited Dec 31, 2003).]

I'm sure you're right that the net effect of RTW buyers on Egyptian tourism is minimal at best, but, FWIW, I am staying for three nights and plan on seeing Giza, the Egyptian Musuem and, time permitting, Coptic Cairo and the Khali-al-Khan. Unfortunately, due to BA's flight schedule, I only have two full days on the ground for touring.

When I was there I stayed only 2 nights (because of schedule problems) and planned on more on the next trip. There is simply too much to see to cut visits short. I think it will impact the tourist business.

The other issue is that locals will get the sh@ft big time as they have to pay for a major increase in fares and will be paying in Egyptian Pounds. BA screwed up a win-win situation and has made it clear that they don't want our business.

I believe that BA was just protecting their turf. It is one thing when the majority of fares sold for RTW came from Egyptian residents, but it is another when the majority (probably 90%) of Oneworld tickets sold came from outside the country and they knew it was to take advantage of the lower currency.

Yes it's SOME revenue lost for BA but overall, it is losing already when an Egyptian ticket is sold over a similar RTW if sold in say, UK or USA.

BA probably saw that its staff were overwhelmed by demands of RTW ticketing from a small but affluent group of people, and decided that it was time to raise the issue with Oneworld. Maybe the other partner airlines knew of the fare differences but since I think the majority of tickets issued by FTers went to BA, BA felt that it had to do something.

BA is very price conscious. This isn't the first time. Malaysia was cheaper than Singapore.. and they raised the fares so much that the new fares are now higher than Singapore's! Then came South African fares, and now inevidently Egyptian fares.

The airlines would do better if they had some sort of residency restriction on each fare type, thereby keeping the fares affordable to local residents. These fare restrictions exists for point-to-point fares but funnily enough, not for Round The Worlds.

GREAT observations by Guy Betsy

Wow, I'm really lucky then that I got my RTW issued by EMECO last second yesterday 3pm egypt time ....

WOW ... that was close!

Price for the DONE3 was 23'132 EGP (3750$) including a bunch of taxes (for flexibility almost every arrival point of 18 segments is a stopover).

How's 47'156 but-in-seat miles for a 3 continent? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif