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Cost Effective Options for Travel in Africa

Cost Effective Options for Travel in Africa

Old Aug 8, 2007, 10:26 am
  #1  
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Cost Effective Options for Travel in Africa

My next trip to Africa will be in December, and will include Botswana, Lesotho, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda over three weeks.

Suggestions for doing this most cost effectively are very welcome;-)

Has anyone used the Star Alliance Africa Pass, which uses SAA? Obviously this is only available if you fly Star Alliance to Africa. Flying SAA from Europe to SA is very expensive compared to LH.

I have previously used Kenya Airways for travel between Jo'burg, Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, which is good for earning miles with Sky Team. But I cannot find a similar pass with Sky Team. Am I missing something?

If anyone has used the Star Alliance Africa Pass, in what class were the coupons issued? I do not want to change my travel plans and then discover I got less than 100% miles. Some of the SAA classes (T, V, L, W, G) will only earn 50% miles with bmi, and if I use Star Alliance for this trip, I want to maximise miles towards retaining gold status.

On some of the longer legs, I am also interested in more comfort. Does anyone know if it is possible to upgrade one or legs of the Africa Pass?

Thanks for your feedback.
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Old Aug 8, 2007, 8:51 pm
  #2  
 
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Ticket it locally (in africa) and you will get far cheaper deals. Travel inside Africa is anyway expensive enough that you might find it cheaper to fly back to FRA or AMS and then fly back into Africa, in some cases.
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Old Aug 8, 2007, 8:58 pm
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Second that. Your tickets are going to cost a fortune and there's just no way around it. When I was based in Lagos, I twice had to fly to CDG in order to connect back down to Yaounde and Luanda. The problem was more scheduling and reliability than cost of the ticket as price wasn't an issue, but even so, the Africa-Europe-Africa thing isn't all that strange.

Can I recommend though that you look into redeeming miles on KQ for your intra-africa flights? KQ takes NW/KL/AF miles, maybe even the other skyteam members too, and their intra-africa award is cheap at 25k roundtrip, with one free stopover. open jaws are allowed. I used two awards in recent years: LOS-NBO stopover NBO-CPT stopover JNB-NBO-LOS and then LOS-NBO-JNB vacation JNB-NBO-LOS. Considering that the tickets i used miles for could have easily cost $1500 or more, 25k miles is a great value.
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Old Aug 9, 2007, 5:02 am
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Originally Posted by hserus
Ticket it locally (in africa) and you will get far cheaper deals. Travel inside Africa is anyway expensive enough that you might find it cheaper to fly back to FRA or AMS and then fly back into Africa, in some cases.

Thanks for this feedback. I will certainly look at the feasibility of doing some ticketing locally.

But are the prices really cheaper than those sold through the respective websites (e.g. SAA)?
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Old Aug 9, 2007, 5:06 am
  #5  
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Originally Posted by lopez151
Can I recommend though that you look into redeeming miles on KQ for your intra-africa flights? KQ takes NW/KL/AF miles, maybe even the other skyteam members too, and their intra-africa award is cheap at 25k roundtrip, with one free stopover. open jaws are allowed. I used two awards in recent years: LOS-NBO stopover NBO-CPT stopover JNB-NBO-LOS and then LOS-NBO-JNB vacation JNB-NBO-LOS. Considering that the tickets i used miles for could have easily cost $1500 or more, 25k miles is a great value.
I will certainly look at redeeming miles on KQ for intra-africa flights going forward.

However, on this occasion I am travelling for work and can claim travel expenses. Therefore there is no incentive for me to use my miles for this purpose. However, business class upgrades within Africa might be something else, as long the tickets I use allow such upgrades.

I am still interested in hearing experiences of pros and cons of using the Star Alliance Africa Pass, classes of the coupons and whether I will get 100% miles with bmi. Thanks for your feedback.
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Old Aug 11, 2007, 9:26 am
  #6  
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Rules for Star Alliance Africa Pass

The Airpass is available in Economy Class only.
The Airpass is available for travel within Africa only
The Airpass is valid for travel from 10th April 2006.
The Airpass is available to non-African residents.
The Airpass is only available in conjunction with an intercontinental ticket to/from Africa on a Star Alliance member airline.
All flights taken with your Star Alliance African Airpass will be with South African Airways.
Eligible flights taken with your Star Alliance African Airpass will earn miles towards your nominated Star Alliance frequent flyer programme so you can earn status much quicker.
You must confirm your first coupon at the time of purchase. All other coupons can be booked at any time subject to availability.
Minimum 4 sectors, maximum 10. Minimum mileage 750.

Advanced purchase: Reservations are required at least 7 days prior to departure.
Booking class is V.
Minimum stay: 3 days. Maximum stay: 2 months.
Tickets can only be sold or ticketed outside South Africa before arrival.
Cancellation fee: 25% of the fare.
Changes: free of charge provided V class is available and ticket does not have to be reissued. The first sector cannot be changed.
Baggage allowance: 20kg for adults and children, 10kg for infants.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
V class on SAA will only earn 0.5 * miles (at least on bmi), which is disappointing and no coupons can be upgraded to business class.

The other difficulty is that V class may have limited availability at certain times of year on certain routes. For example, I have been told there is no V class availability from JNB to Mauritius in December, which means I cannot visit a college friend who went back home to work in the family business;-(

The coupons themselves are quite good value for money (0.15 cent per mile), but the taxes can add up. I was given on example of a 6 coupon pass where the taxes were more than the coupons. On a 10 coupon pass - with a number of longer routes, the taxes were relatively a smaller amount of the overall cost.

I hope this is useful to others.

Please let me know if you are interested in having two example routings with pricing posted for future reference.
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