Is anybody working on air for NILE yet? It looks like our best scenario is KLM through Amsterdam. Coming back, the Amman to Amsterdam segment is on Royal Jordanian; has anybody flown their business class? Looks like reviews are very, very mixed.

Hi Pam, I'm already booked both ways Toronto- London- Cairo and the reverse on British Air.
We are able to book 350 days out and this way I get Business class all the way.

Looking forward to seeing you and Mark again.

Pat, did you not sign up for the Petra extension?

Forgot to add, I always use my Air Miles for this.

Have just transferred another 250,000 over to BA Executive Club as they have a deal on for 50% more. So now I have 375,000 miles waiting for another trip.....ROAR 3 perhaps????

Yup,we did, but I'll let Ngaire/Agency handle Amman to Cairo flight the night before as BA's flight leaves Cairo in early morning.

Oh, okay. I thought we would be flying back from Amman instead of going back to Cairo.

You have a lot more air miles than we do; this will wipe us out if I don't find a better alternative, plus a bunch of $$$.

Pam - I did BA both ways. Even in coach it was fine except that ungodly early hour Pat mentions that it leaves Cairo for London. (And obviously biz leaves the same time as coach) BA has a Premium Economy class that looked good as I walked past it. Should be less miles; definitely less money.
Don't know 1 thing about Air Jordan, but if they are as good as Air Egypt or Memphis Air in Egypt, you will be fine for the short hop over to Cairo. If Anne wasn't doing her Bucking Bronco thing this weekend, she could tell you about it.

Well, Pat gave me ideas so I looked at RT MEM/CAI and we could do it all on KLM. How much of a jump is it from AMM to CAI? (edit; I see Egyptair does it in 25 minutes, Royal Jordanian takes an hour and a half, not bad). What date are you using for your return? We'd be spending 10 hours in Amsterdam on the way to Cairo, so would have to back up a day on departure. I think.

Betty, the Royal Jordanian flight was from Amman to Amsterdam. If we do Cairo RT, they wouldn't be in the picture anymore.

Hi Pam,

I'm not sure which air carrier you have miles on, but the following are all offering bonuses for transfers. Depending on your situation, it may be worth paying to transfer miles from one account to another. I plan to do this with my Delta account and transfer 150,000 miles to Len's account. We'll then have enough for ROAR 3 if we can snag biz seats.

Delta - transfer miles and receive 100% bonus (deadline is May 31)
Continental - transfer miles and receive 20% bonus (deadline is June 30)

American is also offering a 30% bonus if you purchase miles. (I'm usually not a fan of purchasing miles unless I'm topping off my accounts.)

Andrea

Wow! Our miles are all still in Amex; I wonder if I can transfer to Mark's account, then transfer to mine. Or vice versa.

I found it. I think it's too late for us to take advantage of it, if you can only transfer a few miles at a time.

I got it booked! What an adventure it was, too. Wanted to fly NW/KLM but they don't have a transfer agreement with Amex, so needed to use Skymiles. They are NOT completely integrated with their award ticketing at all.

First Delta agent just didn't like me and saw no award seats. I thanked her sweetly, hung up and called back. That agent worked until her fingertips were numb, but just couldn't get into the NW system far enough, so she transferred me to the partner desk. There was no award seating coming back from Cairo on April 4th, so we put it off to 5th. The reason I was looking at 4th was that the flight leaves Cairo at 3:00 am, and if we flew on the 3rd it would make for a really long day. I will try back later on, to see if we can switch to the 4th.

The best thing? 120k pp for business class. Started at 175k but dropped somewhere along the line.

When we took the Jordan extension, they flew us on Royal Jordanian. As good if not better than the EgyptAir short hops.

Despite the pride the Egyptians and Jordanians have in their peaceful relations with Israel, our flights did not fly over Israeli air space. Therefore the 2 hour flight time was correct.

The toughest part of the trip was getting home from Jordan. We didn't investigate a direct flight from Amman to New York. With benefit of hindsight, it probably would have been the better choice.

We were routed back through Cairo at the end of our Jordan extension. The lines were looooong. Egyptian citizens get priority. A group from Overseas Adventure Tours was complaining loudly about this - which resulted in the Egyptians closing the line they were in. All that did was back things up for everyone. Check on this, but I think we needed another Egyptian visa to re-enter the country. They are easily obtained before you go through immigration. It took a good 45 minutes to get out of immigration. All in all, I think we were into the airport by 10 pm.

We also had the 3 am departure to Milan for a 10 am connection to Newark. We arranged before we left for Amman to have a pick up service in Cairo. When we finally got through immigration, we were taken over to an airport hotel, where we got a drink and waited out the majority of the layover in the restaurant/bar. Our guy picked us up again around 1 am, checked us through and we went to the lounge for the last hour. Not much on offer in the lounge, but better than sitting in the gate area.

Hope that helps! Enjoy the trip - it was one of our favorites.

Cheers, Anne

Anne, originally I was looking at a direct flight from Amman to Amsterdam. But it was Royal Jordanian, and there was no way to upgrade to business class. It's going to be a really active trip, and I can't face the thought of being cramped up at the end. Hopefully, K&D can manage an extension for us and help with what we need to do. I believe I can fill that extra day at the museum.

Pam - No worries. Just filling all of you in on our experience.

K&D has done a simply wonderful job for us. Enjoy your trip! Cheers, Anne

Help, please!

I need some advice on air for NILE.

I usually fly NWA out of Detroit, but their connections are not working for me. I would rather just leave from Amman instead of going back to Cairo. The best flight I could find is Air France that leaves Amman at 1:45 a.m. on April 3. Is this too early a flight or should I keep looking for something that leaves later in the day?

Susan

From what I can see another possibility is flying Delta to JFK, which leaves a little after midnight. If you usually fly NW and "collect" their FF miles, DL of course is a partner. AF is a member of Skyteam also.

Royal Jordanian has a flight that leaves at 12:15 in the afternoon to Chicago.

Your shortest flight back would probably be on DL through JFK.

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Eugene

Thanks Eugene.

I will give Delta a call.

Susan

Get the Delta agent to put you through to their "partner desk"; those people can get into more mileage programs, easier.

Did you look at Royal Jordanian from Amman into Amsterdam, and then on to Detroit on KLM?

Thanks Pam.

The Royal Jordanian to Amsterdam is also a good option.

I will try to get this resolved today.

Susan

I am fully booked.

I did get great connections through New York on Delta. I leave Amman at 12:10 a.m. April 3 and I land in Detroit at 11:30 a.m. on April 3.

I bought an upgradeable ticket and upgraded to business class.

Susan

We are fully booked finally. I noticed you were all booking while we were on Viking and I just couldn't get my act together. Then, I was too busy for the past two weekends since returning...

Living in NY, we decided to do non-stops on Delta, though we really love BA. We leave on March 19th at 10:30pm and arrive mid afternoon on the 20th in Cairo. and we have the same flight as Susan from Amman on April 3. We land in JFK at 5:45am on April 3. We did the same thing as she did and bought upgradable tickets and upgraded to business class. A round trip ticket outright was 230K points each; upgrading was just 50K.

Congrats Andi - my least favorite chore booking international flights!!

We are booked too - used my new EXP status on AA to get revenue management to open up a couple of seats on the BOS-LHR outbound. 2 biz class award tickets were 135,000 miles each. Long layover at LHR but we'll be able to use the First lounge at T5. No Petra for us - I'm lucky I was able to convince Jerel to do the Egypt portion!

My husband and I are now going to be on the Nile trip and are so excited. We will be flying on LH from Chicago through Frankfurt to Cairo and arriving a day early. This will be our first group trip with LCT although we have been on several cruises,South Africa and Peru/Galapagos Islands privately with Brown and Keene. We are looking forward to getting to know everyone before we arrive in March.

Welcome Mark and Cheron! Once you have done one of "our" group trips, you'll watch for the next opportunity.

Andrea - try very hard to add Petra. When I did Egypt I passed on Petra and have been kicking myself ever since. It was the right decision at the time but so wrong in the long run. I am still hoping to get there some day but can't imagine the circumstances. Hope you can get Jerel to change his mind, but then I have a husband that doesn't go at all, so understand your challenge.

Tried to book award tickets from Bos to Cairo, for Biz class Delta wanted 260k per ticket. To buy a ticket that we could upgrade on it was like $2k each plus 50k miles per ticket. Decided to do Coach at $950 per ticket since they are overnight flights and was able to get the Bulkhead/Exit row seats, so I guess on this one I will save some miles and buy my own sandwich....

Its amazing how Delta wants double the miles to go to Cairo then it was to go to J-Burg last year for Game/Samba....

FV

Frank - I am getting to Johannesburg on Delta biz ff for 120K miles. They wanted 350K to take me to Capetown. Go figure - the 2 cities are only an air hour apart. I'll pay SAA to fly me onward to the ship.
I definitely understand your frustration.

NW cancelled the flight MEM/AMS on the 17th. I had to work it out through Delta, since I had booked with Skymiles. Now we are flying Mem/JFK/CAI on Delta, still returning on KLM/NW. So far.