Seychelles Trip Report
 

Here is a link to my trip report for our recent trip to the Seychelles, Mauritius and Paris on Skyteam using DL skymiles.

http://pointsmilesandmartinis.blogsp...s-airline.html

TPA>ATL
ATL>CDG
CDG>SEZ Air Seychelles Code Share
MRU>CDG Air France
CDG>ATL
ATL>TPA

Got them for 120k each in business elite.

Looking forward to reading your TR, as I also flew to SEZ on SkyTeam using miles (PrivatAir to Europe and KQ to NBO and SEZ).

Unfortunately, looks like your 6/17/09 Blog entry is only about booking the ticket, not the actual flight experience - did I miss the TR, or is it forthcoming?

I noticed you had 'coming soon' next to some elements of the TR, but I wasn't sure whether you've already posted the Air Seychelles CDG-SEZ report yet.

Thanks,
BB

Your right, its only about the ticket itself. The upcoming TR (1 now posted for the Hilton Seychelles) are about the hotels. I had not taken any pictures from the flight so thought I would leave it at that. If you have specific questions about Air Seychelles let me know.

Thoughts on the Air Seychelles portion of the trip:
-Wine was selection of of South African Red, French Red, or South African White. The French Red ran out about half way through dinner.
-Dinner was choice of Beef, Chicken, or fish. Chose the chicken and it was edible.
-Seats were somewhat uncomfortable compared to DL's Business Elite product. They were cradle seats, but my seat didn't function properly as the foot rest didn't extend all the way.
-Funky spray was sprayed upon departure, they said it was compliant with international standards but I covered my mouth.

Thoughts on Air France portion of trip:
-Seats were more comfortable than Air Seychelles but not as good as DL's in my opion. I kept sliding down when it was fully reclined into the flat angled position.
-Food was pretty good. Although the service was lacking, basically they dropped off the food, gave 1 drink service, then disapeared as stated in other posts about AF.

The DL portions were fantastic.
-Food was on par if not a little better than AF's in my opion.
-The wine selection was comparable.
-I like the DL cradle seat the best compared to the AF & Air Seychelles seats.
-The FA's were by far the best on DL. Very friendly and genuinly made an effort to ensure we had a pleasant flight experience.

Hope this helps.

So with all these wonderful enhancements to the world's largest and "best" ff program can we still book a skyteam award on AF to SEZ? I am looking to October 2010 and was wondering if I should plan an all award or award+purchase.

I guess yes, but good luck find even one seat

I was searching from CDG-SEZ in C for 2 seats for entire 5 months, day by day, only found 1 day available.

Earlier this year, the seat almost available on every flight

We found them 11+ months out, looking earlier they would seem to drop off at just under 11 or 10 1/2 months, could just be the award seats are getting booked and therefore disappearing.

The bigger problem for us, beside trying to finalize something a year away, was that for every date we tried at that 11 month time frame we could never get any connecting flights on DL or NW metal at the lowest redemption levels.

For instance, we found flights all on Air France and Air Seychelles from a U.S. gateway to Mahe and back for 120k each in J, but as soon as we would try to add a connecting flight from DTW or ORD back to MSP where we wanted to start the trip the mileage would shoot up to as much as 280k.

So:

DTW>CDG>SEZ>CDG>DTW all on AF and HM in J for 120k.

MSP>DTW>CDG>SEZ>CDG>DTW>MSP on AF and HM again with the MSP>DTW segments on NW in J or Y for 220 to 280k.

Arggh.

Just booked two business class AF tix on Delta.com: JFK- CDG, stopover, CDG-SEZ, SEZ-CDG, evening layover, CDG-JFK over July 4th week for 120,000 and $250 in taxes each. Price on AF.com for exact itinerary for both tickets was $31,017, bringing the total value of each Skymile to nearly 13 cents .. great value IMO :cool:

In order to book AF on DL.COM on multi-city search, I used Expertflyer.com 3 day flex search for O (Business class award availability). Surprisingly there was a lot. Once I had dates/ flight numbers, I plugged away on DL.com and it came up without a problem. Am very much looking forward to this trip- hopefully I can switch to the A380 flights if availability becomes open (set an Expert Flyer alert).

January seems to have some availability. For some reason, the multi-city search is required on delta.com, but I found IAD-CDG-SEZ-CDG-IAD Jan 18-22 in a random test search for 80K and $173. Why is it that it won't work on round trip searches (where it does work for IAD-CDG-MRU and provides all type of layovers from a few hours to 23h50m)....but it won't for IAD-CDG-SEZ? I simply do not understand the logic of Delta's award search engine sometimes.

Kenyan flies twice a week Nairobi-Mahe.

Pitbrian: Thanks much for this post. I just booked MCI-DTW-CDG-SEZ-CDG-DTW-MCI for 120K/ticket in J for my honeymoon! You saved us 360K miles over our alternate routing!

Congratulations. That is a wonderful deal and you will love The Seychelles.

Air Seychelles is installing angled lie-flat seats with a very generous reported 70 inches of pitch in business class ("Pearl Class") on its three 763s. ^ My wife and I have DL award tickets for travel to SEZ in January, so I am thrilled about this development. Installation has already been completed on one airship, a second is apparently being retrofitted now, and the third and final 763 is scheduled to have the new seats installed sometime in November. In-seat power is a new addition, but, unfortunately, the in-flight entertainment remains the same, featuring portable digEplayers. More details, including a link to pictures of the new seat, here.

Great news about the lie-flats. I'll just have to make a return trip!!