Tell Us How to Fly to Nairobi--Please!
 

OK, first, don't tell us to get on an airplane!
I'm planning a two to three week safari in Tanzania and Kenya for 07. Starting and stopping points will be Nairobi and/or Arusha. Can anyone suggest air travel for us? Based on the postings from you experts, we'd like to try to arrange air separately and contract with local guides in Africa for the rest of the trip. There will be four of us coming from the St Louis area. We do not mind splitting the trips in half by flying to Amsterdam or another intermediate stop to make it more affordable. Plus, we've got some FF (50-80K each) on four different airlines--AA, NWA, UA, and our Cap 1 miles account. Thanks for any and all suggestions.

A couple of thoughts and questions -

Do you all need to travel together for all legs? By having multiple airline FF points you obviously would be challenged (i.e., it's probably impossible) to get seats on the same flight(s) using miles.

If you really want to use miles, be sure to look at the award charts for the various FF plans. You might find (as we certainly have) that paying for tickets to Europe and then using miles from there is quite a lot more efficient than using miles all the way.

Business or coach? It's a long way from STL to NBO. (For example, combining this point with the one above, a business class award to Africa using AA miles is only 75K miles from Europe, vs. 150K miles from N. America. Other airlines' FFPs will be different of course.)

Also, of course, 2007 is a year long. When in 2007? Different peaks for different months.

British Airways seems to offer more flights than any other airline. You can fly out of JFK, Atlanta and Chicago, and I'm sure there are other options. You connect in London. If you fly from JFK and O'Hare, you connect in Heathrow. However, if you go from Atlanta, you fly into Gatwick and have to take the bus to Heathrow to connect. But it's not a problem b/c you have an almost four-hour layover. One other thing to note - if you fly overnight from the U.S. and then take an AM flight to Nairobi (from London or another European gateway city), you will have to spend the night in Nairobi the day you arrive because it will be too late to head out on safari. Another option is to fly into London, get a dayroom at an airport hotel, get a few hours of shut-eye, then spend the day in London and take the overnight flight from London to Nairobi. You then arrive in Nairobi in the morning instead of the evening and can connect straight to your safari. We did that the first time we went to Kenya and it was really fun!

Also, last year we ended up flying from London to Nairobi on Kenyan Airways. I was a bit aprehensive, but they have three BRAND NEW Boeing 777s and the flight could not have been better. They are a growing airline and a KLM partner, so I have to say I was pleasantly surprised and satisified. If you choose that option, I tink you connect in Amsterdam.

I also did the LHR-NBO-JRO run on Kenya Airways. As CheetahGirl notes, the service is actually pretty good and the planes are in good condition. The flight from LHR to NBO is done on a large jet, and then you connect on a smaller plane (20 passengers or so) from NBO to JRO on a Precision Air flight. I liked this flight since it's in the morning and you get to fly by Mt. Kilimanjaro. The LHR-JRO flight on Kenya Airways cost me about $1000. It should be cheaper if you're stopping in NBO.

I used frequent flier miles to get myself to London, and I spent a few days in London on the way there and on the way back. This was a nice way to break up the trip if you can manage the vacation time.

I found it far easier to get an award ticket from the US to Europe, then trying to use frequent flier miles to do the whole trip or even just the Europe to Africa bit.

Our preferred travel months are Aug-Sept-Oct, and we are very open to purchasing tix to/from Europe or another point and then use FF miles for the balance, or vice versa. We realize that we will only be able to fly free a portion using the miles, probably just for one of us, and will end of paying the balance. Which foreign airlines should we also look into? Thanks to all for the info so far!

Do each of you have a 50-80K balance in those programs or just one of you or does everyone have balances in different programs? Could you be more specific as to exactly what you have in what accounts?

OK, the DH is the one who flies most. He has 79K in AA, 45K in NWA, 32K in UA, and we hope to have 100K in Cap 1 miles (good for $1K in ticket value).

I think AA codeshares with BA, so you can probably use those miles towards a BA flight from the states to London or from London to Nairobi.

UA now codeshares with SAA, so those miles would probably help you only if you were going to South Africa.

NWA is part of SkyTeam so their miles should be good for Delta flights, so you could use miles to fly Delta to a European gateway city like London or Amsterdam and then connect on to Nairobi from there.

I also think NWA miles are good on KLM, so you could use miles to get to Amsterdam and then connect from there to the Kenyan Airwas flight I mentioned in my previous post.

Amsterdam is a great stopover point - there is a Sheraton and a Hilton right in the airport. There is any kind of shopping you may need even a grocery store in the airport. The train runs right through the airport and downtown is a 10 minute train ride. The next morning you don't have a commute to get to the airport.

A North America to Africa award in economy is 75K with AA, so you have enough for one ticket provided there's award availability.

I think your best option would be AA to Heathrow and BA to Nairobi. BA flights between the US and UK are specifically excluded on AA awards but you can use BA between other regions. SN Brussels and SWISS are also possibilities from Europe to Africa, but neither have daily flights to Nairobi and SWISS redemption ends Oct 31.

Contact AA when the award booking window opens for your dates and see what they have available. Ask them to price the same flights for the other paid 3 tickets. You can probably use your Capital One miles as a credit toward one of those paid tickets as well. I don't know exactly how the Capital One program works but I think you can book your own ticket and redeem your "miles" as a statement credit.

I don't think you have enough NW or UA miles to do much with.

Good luck!

Cap 1 (in spite of an extensive ad program) has a mileage program that's not as good as other cards. 100,000 points in another card would have gotten you much more than $1000 towards a ticket. But they are good for their low or no foreign conversion rate fee so it's a good card to use once you are in Europe or Africa if buying souvenirs, dinners.