After four days of sun bathing on an island in the Indian Ocean, it will be time to switch locales and marvel at the pyramids in Egypt. We decided to spend the bulk of our Egyptian trip in Luxor, and we used United Mileage Plus miles for the flights to get us from Mauritius (MRU) to Luxor (LXR).
Trip Report Index:
- Introduction
- Flights from San Francisco to Mauritius
- Lodging in Mauritius
- Flights from Mauritius to Luxor
- Egypt Lodging
- Flights from Cairo to the Maldives
- Maldives Lodging
- Flights from the Maldives back to San Francisco
Just as there is only a single flight operated by South African airlines into Mauritius from Johannesburg, there’s only a single flight out of Mauritius back. The flight leaves from MRU at 4:40PM, and it lands into JNB at 7:15PM. The good part about it leaving this late is that it gives us 3/4 of a day to hang out in Mauritius before we depart.
The bad part is that by landing at 7:15PM, we miss some of the better connecting Star Alliance options. For example, The Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul leaves around 6:30PM so we won’t be able to catch that one. Similarly, there’s a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Unlike my bad luck on the JNB-MRU route, there were two business class seats open on MRU-JNB for the day we needed. We nabbed them.
That gets us to JNB, but we need to make our way up to Egypt. As I mentioned, by getting in at 7:15PM, we missed the option to be able to take the Turkish Airlines flight. Egyptair, on the other hand, has a non-stop flight to Cairo that leaves at 9:45PM. This flight is operated by one of their A330s. Egyptair is rolling out a new configuration in some of their A330s, but I believe this route is flown by planes with their old configuration.
When I booked these tickets, there were not two seats available in Business class. There was a single seat in Business Class, and there was a seat in Economy. I got the Economy ticket for me and the Business class ticket for my fiancé. For my ticket, I still paid the Business Class amount of miles. I did this because my MRU-JNB flight was in Business Class, and I planned to check daily for space opening up in Business Class so I could switch to that cabin once it became available.
Once landing in Cairo, there are flights to Luxor nearly every hour, and these flights have plenty of award availability. This is real quick hop in an ERJ 170 plane.
The overall itinerary actually delivers quite a lot of flying for the amount of miles used. To go from MRU to LXR in Business Class is only 45,000 United MileagePlus Miles, and we’re traveling over 6,000 miles. I dropped 45,000 miles for my ticket and an additional 45,000 miles for my fiancé’s ticket. While it was a good value in terms of miles, the fees were quite high! My ticket was $99.60 in fees. Here is the breakdown:
The fees for my fiancee’s ticket were actually $1.35 more expensive than mine. Who knows why? Maybe because I booked my ticket in the coach cabin on the Egyptair flight?
Type of Points Used: United MileagePlus Miles
Number of Points Used: 90,000 (45,000 x 2)
Total Dollars Used: $200.55
Update: Oh and FYI – this post is a bit outdated! I checked daily for Business Class space on the JNB-CAI route, and it finally opened up! Woot! I’ll be up front with Katy!
