Hello,

I am planning an Egypt trip in June and trying to book a flight from Aswan to Abu Simbel, but can't seem to do it. Egyptair says there are no flights, which seems odd to me. Can anyone guide me in the right direction to book this? THANK YOU!

David

I flew from Aswan to Abu Simbel in May 2006, and from what I seen the whole plane was full of tourists that belonged to the organized tours. In my case I just asked the tour company to add Abu Simbel to my itinerary.

Are you trying to plan the Egypt tour yourself?

dagactor: As I understand it (and I am an Egypt novice), Egyptair's flights to Abu Simbel are considered "excursions," rather than true "flights." (Imagine that you are going on a tour bus rather than a plane, and it might make more sense.) This means that you cannot select the date and time you want to go and come back as you would a "normal" flight. You have to book the flight as an excursion. Not entirely sure how you do this on your own; might try calling Egyptair; I know you cannot do it via their website - I tried, and failed.

I am working with a travel agent for my upcoming trip and he handled the details for me. I am going to Abu Simbel from Cairo with a stop in Aswan (to pick up more excursioners). I was told that my time in Abu Simbel would be determined by the flight I took. In other words, if you catch the 8:00 a.m. flight from Aswan to Abu Simbel, you have to come back on the 10:00 a.m. flight (just making up times; cannot recall the actual details at the moment.) If you want to stay longer than Egyptair allots, you would have to buy two separate excursion packages. Does this make sense?

You don't have to stick with the other passengers, and I'm not sure whether Egyptair provides a guide. I have arranged for a private guide, so I don't know these details. I do know that I have to be back at Abu Simbel airport on time!

I had the same problem, so I contacted the New York office of Misr Travel, the official travel agency. The man there was very helpful, and got us tickets. He only got us the tickets, we did the rest. He seemed a little surprised, since most folks go on arranged tours, but we wanted to do it all ourselves. It worked just fine.

>This means that you cannot select the date and time you want to go and come back as you would a "normal" flight.

This is incorrect. Provided there are seats available one can select any date and any flight.

NoFlyZone: You are correct that you can pick your own day and time to start the excursion, but (as I understand it), you cannot pick your return time. You are buying an excursion package, not a plane ticket per se. I think the alloted time is about two hours. If you want to stay at Abu Simbel longer than that, you need to buy a second, later excursion, ie, you would fly to AS on the earlier excursion and then return to Aswan on the second, later excursion. At least this was how it was explained to me because I love to linger at major sites and I was concerned that the time alloted at AS would not be sufficient for me. I did not want to incur the expense of a second excursion, so I am hoping that the alloted time is enough.

Some people stay overnight 1 or 2 nights in Abu Simbel, and only one ticket.

The flights have the following restriction which only affects the price, not the selection of flights:

"for asw/abs shuttle service - return travel must be on next flight after two hours.otherwise charge double the applicable fare-except ms flight 249"

I double checked and it is easy to pick any flights and price a ticket. I used June 11 - 12 as a random test .

Thank you all so much for your input! Yes, I am planning all my travel independently. Lots of reading and I may book some local guides while there. Thanks again!
David

as I mentioned, our tickets were not an excursion, just tickets, an open jaw Aswan - Abu simbel - Cairo. WE did all the rest of the planning, and hotel reservations.

Momliz, do you have the name of the individual with whom you arranged your trip at Misr Travel?

Also, momliz, can you please email me at [email protected] (my "public" email address), so I can ask you a few more questions about your trip (we are also independent travelers). Thanks much.

I sure do find this discussion confusing and perplexing! I too, want to stay overnight at Abu Simbel. Where to stay, I have no idea, as I have just begun researching this board for a trip to Egypt this winter. But it is important to me to not be rushed at this site. I'm one who can wander around an old castle ruin in Scotland for 3-4 hours and remain completely absorbed and entranced--even after the 20th ruin!

Can someone confirm clearly that it really can only be done by paying for two excursion tickets? That sounds bizarre to me, but maybe I am not reading carefully enough. Any other options for someone on a tight budget?

Land transport down to Abu Simbal and back is the way to go for anyone on a tight budget. There are hundreds of buses/cars/vans going every day and it is easy to set up transport down. They will only charge you for RT, not two round trips (if that is the case - and I agree that sounds bizarre). Probably if you google hotels in Abu Simbal, you will find a place to stay and with luck there will be an email address for making reservations and when you have that you can question the hotel about providing transport down for you.

Casual Cairo-I agree.I was in Egypt last month and took the 4a.m. convoy from Aswan to Abu Simbel.I was planning to fly,but the rest of the group(12 of us in all) was willing to go by van,so I went along.I was kind of dreading it-what if I had to go to the bathroom?It was fine,and I was glad to have a chance to see Upper Egypt fly by my window.On the way back we went to see Philae,which was also wonderful.

ive just started looking in to a couple of days in aswan and abu simbel. I read that there are two standard long day trips from aswan one of which includes abu simbel and that many tourists cram everything into these two days.

Would I be better off trying to fly to abu simbel? how long is the drive btw the 2?

FYI - anyone that cares - I stopped at 3 different agencies today in Tahrir Square, all claiming to represent Egypt Air, to ask about this crazy Round Trip question associated with spending the night. Unfortunately, not a one of them had an employee that understood enough English to answer the question, and I don't know enough Arabic to make the point to them either.

The point being that I'm trying to get to the bottom of this and will keep trying until I find someone that understands me and can tell us what their policy is on this.