i went to mru to pick up my aone6 two weeks ago. the staff at the ba office in port louis is very efficient and helpful. also, mru is a beautiful, effecient and friendly place (i liked it better than the seychelles) so for those of you planning on purchasing a ticket in mauritius, it's worth spending a few days and enjoying the island.

when i went to the ba office i noticed the cathay pacific office (literally) right next door to the ba office. since ba mru charges the $300 ticketing surcharge, has anyone considered booking this through cx and ticketing it at the local cx office in mru to avoid the $300 fee? i am considering this for my next ticket.

also, comair lost my luggage twice (mru-jnb and cpt-jnb) in two weeks. the first time they lost it for 1 week and when they finally returned my suitcase it had been pilfered and robbed (they stole expensive christmas gifts i had in my checked luggage and comair does not cover "valuable" items in checked luggage). they are really a horrible airline to have to deal with for lost luggage and take the cake for incompetence. plus they only gave me 500 rand (about 80 dollars) despite my f (c) class tickets. just a word to the wise to avoid them whenever possible and take the mru-lhr true ba flight when you can.

regards,
alemdohorizonte

update:
i am planning another rtw ex-mru and wrote to the cx ticketing office in mru to see if they would ticket my next trip. my thought was i could avoid the ticketing surcharge that the mru ba office imposes. here is the reply from the cx mru office:

"Dear Sir,
We are an offline office in Mauritius and we do not sell any one world
ticket.
Regards,
GSA CX office counter"

so it looks like ba and their $300 scalper's surcharge is the only ticket for the rtw show in mru.

Interesting. What about the rule that you must ticket with the first over-water carrier? Could that be the problem? Obviously, the only OW over-water carrier in MRU is BA.

I usually pick up my MRU tix at the airport, BA rep meets my inbound with paperwork, escorts me to the lounge, all very smooth. Staff very nice.

i think the rule states that the outbound carrier must ticket meaning that they cannot refuse to do it. i think any carrier may ticket but if they are not providing the first leg they could refuse. aa does this without a problem. i was hoping that cx would as well but no such luck.

Alemdohorizonte
I am thinking of buying the same ticket out of MRU.
May I ask what the approx total price is for 6 Continents
incl taxes and service fees.
Do you know if BA offer a First Class cabin from MRU to LHR.
Do you know the email address for the BA office there?
Many Thanks

BA service MRU-LHR is a standard four class 744. Remember, if your flight ex-MRU is the MRU-LHR flight, you must be traveling westbound. The reason is that you can only transit Europe once, so you use up your London stop immediately. If you're traveling eastbound and start with MRU-LHR, I don't believe that you have a way to get back to MRU without transiting Europe again.

Yes and yes they do.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ight=mauritius
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...52&postcount=2
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...60&postcount=6

hi boar,
i did an aone6 with 20 segments and the ticket total was MRU 288829. on top of this was ba mru's service fee for MRU 9235.

my initial ticketed routing took me mru-jnb-hkg-bkk so i didn't use ba's service out of africa but i know that it is 4 class as the other posters have stated. the mru-jnb service is on comair (a ba subsidiary) and they use older 737 planes with the configuration similar to what ba uses on it's intra-european flights. comair lost my luggage twice in two weeks (on mru-jnb and cpt-jnb) so be wary of them.....

i know that many people connect through mru and pick up their ticket in transit at the airport. if you have time, spend some time exploring the island. it's very nice--friendly, and picturesque. plus prices outside of the resorts are reasonable and not as over-inflated as they are in other places like the seychelles.

i believe that the other posters gave you email addresses. if not, pm me and i'll give you the one i used.

have fun.
alem

Many Thanks guys. Greatly appreciated.

I've flown with Comair MRU-JNB, JNB-CPT and CPT-JNB and had no such problems. But I was in JNB a few weeks ago when the papers had stories of the big problems with baggage theft at JNB. Apparently it's not an individual airline problem but more of an airport problem.

Not true. There is an exception allowuing a second transit through Europe if you are connecting to one of the African destinations that does not have any OW service other than to London. Examples include Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Lagos, Entebbe (and a few others).

I am routing eastbound and did MRU-LHR as my first flight. I will end flying EZE-LHR-NBO (originally, I was routed to end in CPT, but it was a mistake made by BA in MRU and was later caught and corrected by AA -- fine by me, I didn't want to violate the rule).

Total routing:

MRU-LHR-DXB-(stopover)-LHR-(stopover)-SIN-SYD-CNS-(stopover)-AYQ-(stopover)-SYD-(stopover)-HKG-(stopover)-NRT-HKG-JFK // ORD-SFO-(stopover)-ORD // SFO-YVR-JFK-(stopover)-GRU-EZE-(stopover)-LHR-NBO

I agree. There just isn't any evidence to suggest this is a Comair issue. In fact in the past SAA took a lot of the flack about baggage lost/delayed/pilfered. But that was probably more because they carry by far the most passengers through JNB than any specific SAA thing.

So blame the real culprit - ACSA. In fairness the theft issue appears to have abated somewhat. I believe the recent hoohah about delayed luggage was due to broken equipment. Not surprisingly, again, it's ACSA's fault. They are also responsible for the shabby apron buses that never turn on the air conditioning - cost savings, you understand.

And they imagine they can be privatised one day. Apparently they haven't realised that most fund managers are serious road warriors and their reputation will preceed them when they go to tout the company for listing.

Yes, of course. You're absolutely right, Pres. I was thinking only in terms of ending at MRU in order to buy the next AONE* ticket.

Very true. You would need to make your own way to MRU to start another ticket.

What was wrong with ending in CPT instead of NBO ?