I had some e-correspondence with the BA GSA at MRU a few months ago but am not sure the address is still good. Could somebody send me a PM with a working email address for them? My wife is thinking about starting an XONE there when we're in country in August. Thanks a bunch.

Gardyloo, I've PMed you with the contact information I use. They are generally very helpful people to work with. And they respond very quickly to e-mails.

However, as you may be aware, a couple of weeks ago, BA-MRU initiated a "service fee" of $300 for preparing and issuing tickets. One other caution is that they can't seem to confirm A inventory seats that Expert Flyer shows as available. Initially this seemed restricted to the BA122 MRU-LHR flight for which I have been wait listed for preferred dates on various occasions. It has always seemed surprising to me that they can't seem to access inventory on their "own originated" flight. Finally I changed to a date that they said they could confirm. And then they couldn't confirm the next flight, LHR-CAI, and I have been wait listed for about a month for a preferred date in October (one that fits with the MRU-LHR date I agreed to). For this whole month, EF has consistently shown at least A5 for the target date-- and the seat map shows no occupied seats. Finally today I got tired of waiting and phoned BA-USA and within 10 minutes had gotten confirmation for two seats for the preferred date.

ReelChief, I'd be grateful too for the new contact information. I've tried the phone number ending 8000 without success and the email starting contactba.1. doesn't work either.

The $300 service fee rails, but doesn't stop the ex-MRU AONEXs being great value. The price in £ keeps falling too - in direct proportion to the cost of my mortgage - UK interest rates have just hit 5.75% !

BTW, I'm ending an AONE4 in CAI beforehand, and am guessing EK is the best way to get from CAI-MRU, unless anyone has experience with others ?

Thanks.

Just an update -

Thanks for the PM, ReelChief - I'm in touch, although they seem to be caught in a minor rules-interpretation loop that surprises me given what I assume(d) would be the benefit of more experience by now. Oh well... As a result, though, it seems to be taking quite a lot longer to get a PNR and price now than when I tried earlier this year. It's now been about a week since I sent the original itinerary email and we've had 2 exchanges. I expect the next one will be pay dirt, and will advise.

just curious - what is the rules problem that you had with them?

The ticket starts with MRU-JNB//CPT-JNB-SYD.... and ends with MAD-xJNB-WDH-JNB and they thought the pass through JNB on the way to Namibia constituted a stopover, thus a third stop in continent of origin. I showed them that it was just a (barely legal) connection, but I have yet to hear back. If they still won't budge, I'll have them issue the ticket w/o the WDH legs and then have it reissued (by AA) later.

It looks like SA is the only other practical choice, and their schedule is just as inconvenient as EK's, with an 0225 departure. Getting to MRU is even more "fun" than finding a seat out of there.

FareCompare seems to list "all flights from a city" here for MRU: http://www.farecompare.com/flights/M...-MRU/city.html

Reelchief flew CAI-MRU with Emirates. See this thread.

I've PMed you with the e-mail- I'd start with that - they have responded quickly-- and the phone info I have may be out of date.

You are starting from a good place, cost-wise. On EK I think you can still do CAI-DXB-MRU for about $900 in C and $1100 in F which, given the overnight flight times, is especially worth considering. Check ITA, or EK itself, and interestingly you will probably find that the DXB-MRU flight by itself is likely to be 50% more than this!

I'm surprised that they have had a problem with this. They did have some problems with the rules last summer when they were first getting a number of inquiries but I thought by now they would have it down. Rather than settle for a re-issue why not push them to contact the main BA RTW desk and get the correct interpretation.

Alternatively, rather than using up two segments for JNB-WDH-JNB you can buy them separately for about $400 economy or $700 business. The flight is under 2 hours and you would have a choice of SA or SW (Air Namibia) which might provide more convenient flight times-- the latter, for example, is in the early morning each way, instead of Comair's afternoon flights. About 18 months ago, I flew SW on CPT-WDH-CPT (economy) and it was very reasonable.

I really want to get the ticket booked because D inventory on her SYD leg is starting to get dicey; the longer the res wanders around the bowels of BA the harder it might be for her to get outta Dodge. (I posted a thread on the QF board about JNB-SYD being J9 C9 D0 day after day and the answer I got was more or less, "Tough, mate.") I'm 99% sure the ticket will get re-issued at some point during the RTW anyway, so adding back the WDH legs (or not) can be done easily enough.

I do take your point on the WDH price comparo however. We may end up doing precisely what you suggest, or may well hire a car at CPT and drive up there, which would allow more touring of Namibia anyway.

Given these considerations, dropping the JNB-WDH-JNB current request seems reasonable. Good luck on JNB-SYD.

We had considered driving CPT-WDH instead of flying but several CPT-based friends suggested that the drive would take a lot of time and wouldn't be that interesting compared with spending the same amount of time driving around Namibia after flying to WDH.

Far off topic, any recent impressions of Etosha from the WDH travelers would be appreciated, especially from anyone who knows the place from its former glory.

We were considering Etosha for our August trip to southern Africa but am also wanting to hear more recent reports over the condition of the main camps there, which last I heard were being renovated last year and this.

Herself and I are futzing around with SA itineraries including the MRU side trip; it looks like Namibia will wait till next year (we're trying to go every year) as we want to go back to the Sabi Sands this year and also do some touring around KZN, in addition to likely meetings and activites in the western Cape.