Review of Egyptair flight Cairo Casablanca in Economy

Airline Egyptair
Flight MS847
Class Economy
Seat 26C
Aircraft Airbus A321
Flight time 06:00
Take-off 10 Dec 14, 09:10
Arrival at 10 Dec 14, 13:10
MS   #82 out of 96 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings. 68 reviews
Nick
By 3282
Published on 27th November 2015
This is the second report about my complicated Johannesburg to Casablanca roundtrip on Star Alliance. If you read the first entry, Johannesburg to Frankfurt, go ahead and skip the preamble.

Intra-Africa travel can yield a great value when using United MileagePlus awards, if done correctly. Travel between most city pairs in Africa are usually the same award price, whether they're an hour apart or across the continent. When travelling from far southern Africa to far northern Africa, you can often get a complicated routing through Europe. For someone looking to get from point A to point B, this may be viewed negatively, but for a backpacking AvGeek, it's a huge positive. My itinerary below cost 52,500 Mileage Plus Miles and $192.30 in taxes and fees. It was ticketed as a roundtrip from Johannesburg to Casablanca, but it afforded me an 8 hour daytime layover in Frankfurt, a two night stopover in Cairo, and a 17.5 hour overnight layover in Lisbon. For comparison's sake, a one way Business Saver Award from Frankfurt to Johannesburg is 55,000 miles plus taxes and fees. Even Frankfurt to Casablanca would cost 55,000 miles, a bad value for such a short distance, but that's the price of Europe region to Northern Africa region. I was technically just travelling from Southern Africa region to Northern Africa region and back. The value of itineraries like this are even greater when you consider the high cash price of intra-Africa airfares.

Johannesburg to Frankfurt (Economy, Lufthansa): http://flight-report.com/en/report-12213.html
Frankfurt to Cairo (Economy, Lufthansa): Mentioned in the prior report, full report skipped
Cairo to Casablanca (Economy, EgyptAir): You are here
Casablanca to Lisbon (Business, Portugalia):
Lisbon to Frankfurt (Business, Lufthansa):
Frankfurt to Johannesburg (Business, South African):

photo December 2014 Flight Route


I stayed at the Ramses Hilton just north of Tahrir Square. The decor is pretty dated, but it was clean, the staff was fantastic, and at 10,000 HHonors points per night I thought it was quite a steal. In my only prior trip to Cairo, I stayed at the Hilton Zamalek which was also a great stay and came in at 20,000 HHonors points per night.

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The TV had an impressive number of channels. This is Melissa & Joey, an American sitcom, with Arabic subtitles.

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I requested a high floor when I booked and ended up with some great views.

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I also requested that the room face Tahrir Square and was not disappointed. That's the Egyptian Museum in the foreground. As you can see, the city is pretty hazy during the day. Part of it may be from farmers burning rice straw (it does smell a bit like smoke outside), but I think a lot of it is just general smog.

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Here's a zoomed in shot of a random neighborhood viewed from my room. A lot of Cairo still looks like this.

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I took a taxi from Hilton to the airport on the morning of my flight. In my experience the taxi drivers will attempt to rip you off on every ride. When you're leaving a hotel, it's best to negotiate a price or confirm the meter's running before you leave, with the bellman present. Or if you're arriving, don't pay until the bellman greets you. The hotel employees know the game and will side with their guests over the antics of taxi drivers. The dropoff at the airport went fine, Cairo has a decent sized departures area and I got there pretty early in the morning.

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On the subject of taxis, here's a video from my taxi ride from the airport a couple days earlier. The guy just started driving right through this street market, but I guess it's pretty normal because no one seemed surprised.




There's a security check before when you first enter the building before the ticket counters. Check in went fine. There was a decent sized line, but I had time and wasn't checking any bags. The airport is pretty standard with a big food court and the usual duty free shops. There's another security check when you enter your gate area. The gate area was big enough to easily find a seat and had a bathroom, but no access to any shops or restaurants.

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Boarding was smooth, easier than the last time I departed Cairo in February 2014. Back then the second revolution had just ended and there was no formal government in control. Everything in the city felt pretty normal, but there were little weird things like a Police Officer, who was just a guy wearing street clothes, checking everyone's passports before they got onto the jetbridge. No idea who he actually was or what he was looking for. For this flight, boarding for business class began at 08:52, followed by economy boarding by row.

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Does anyone know what the thing in that glass case is? A Qu'ran maybe?

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Boarding took about as long as any other flight. There was a Moroccan youth soccer team on my flight which was kind of interesting. Some notes if you ever fly this aircraft type on Egyptair … There are bathrooms in the middle of the cabin on both sides of the aisle immediately after row 30. Also, there are bulkheads in front of row 20 and 20H is a jumpseat, resulting in reduced legroom for 21H.

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The seats were pretty comfortable. They had plenty of padding and a good amount of legroom.

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We pushed back at 09:14 and were wheels up at 09:34. At 10:12, they came around with pound cake and drinks.

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I received my lunch at 12:05 and it was pretty good. I think this was some sort of lamb.

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The rest of the flight went smoothly, I arrived at Immigration in Casablanca at 12:50, Morocco time. This marks the end of the flight portion of the report. Read on for the Cairo tourism bonus.

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I went to they Pyramids the last time I was in Cairo with a local guide and there were only four other Westerners there. This was just after the second revolution, there was a lot of anti-government violence, and tourism had taken a steep dive. The lack of tourists made things easier for me though. So I didn't need to see the Pyramids again on this trip. I decided to just take a few long walks around the city without any real plan.

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There are still a few remnants of the high security state after the second revolution, like this mass of barbed wire rolling around. Back then there was barbed wire and decked out military personnel all over the place, mostly around important government buildings.

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I walked through Zamalek, the neighborhood where I stayed last time, and stopped in Zooba for a comfortable lunch. Zooba has Egyptian food, but feels like a hip Western restaurant inside. This was probably the best meal I had on my whole trip.













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Verdict

Egyptair

6.8/10
Cabin8.0
Cabin crew7.0
Entertainment/wifi5.0
Meal/catering7.0

Cairo - CAI

4.5/10
Efficiency3.0
Access5.0
Services4.5
Cleanliness5.5

Casablanca - CMN

4.1/10
Efficiency4.5
Access4.0
Services4.0
Cleanliness4.0

Conclusion

Overall, this was not a bad flight. It was my first flight on Egyptair and I'd fly them again. The food was decent, we arrived on time, and the seats were pretty comfortable. There wasn't anything in the way of entertainment options, but this was also just a short haul flight, though a relatively long one.

Related

9 Comments

If you liked this review or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post a comment below !
  • Comment 151862 by
    Benoit75008 7191 Comments
    Thanks Nicholas for this report,

    I wanted to visit Cairo before 2011 and i decided to delay my plans according to weak political situation there...
    Did you feel safe anyway?

    MS is really an average airline, average catering and average comfort.

    See you
    • Comment 329691 by
      Benoit75008 7191 Comments
      Thank you so much for this explaination. I'll think about Cairo again.

      Wish you a nice day!
    • Comment 329669 by
      Nick AUTHOR 171 Comments
      Thanks for reading Benoit75008! I felt safe both times I went to Cairo. I should note that when I went the first time in February 2014, it was after the second revolution had already ended and the military seized control. Tahrir Square was no longer occupied by protesters. Nevertheless, there were still a lot of violent attacks on the police and military. A couple weeks before my trip, a suicide car bomb attack destroyed much of the Islamic Museum of Art which is across the street from the police headquarters. Just by happenstance, while walking to the Khan el-Khalili souq, I walked past the museum and saw the mass amount of damage that had been caused. Any uniformed police/military personnel I saw on the street had full body armor on and most of them had steel shields in front of their posts. Despite all of this, I still felt like the chances of something bad happening to me were extremely low. While I was in there, a suicide bomber attacked a bus of tourists in the northern Sinai, but there were no significant attacks in Cairo. Cairo is much safer relative to the Sinai. I highly encourage you to go to Cairo if you're thinking about it. The city is very interesting just to walk around in, even aside from the normal attractions. Plus, the locals you meet will be very appreciative of your visit. My tour operator from the Pyramids emailed me after I got home to thank me just for coming to Egypt.
    • Comment 329720 by
      Nick AUTHOR 171 Comments
      Those drop down screens were the only thing in the way of IFE. I don't even remember if they were showing anything. I didn't mind though, I was just pleased to have a comfortable cabin.

      The food really was more than I was expecting, so that was a pleasant surprise.

      Thanks for the answer about the glass case! I didn't see a prayer space, but it also never crossed my mind to look for one.

      Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
  • Comment 151969 by
    KL651 TEAM 4534 Comments
    Thanks for this FR.

    I'd have thought that Cairo city center would look more modern that that, with glass and steel buildings but no ;-)

    Good to know you felt safe, because unfortunately Egypt no longer has this reputation and that's a shame because there are lots of magical places.

    Decent experience on MS.
  • Comment 152184 by
    KévinDC TEAM SILVER 6668 Comments
    Thanks for sharing this next report in your crazy Trans-African-via-Europe *A routing!

    Yeah, that room at the Hilton looks like it's from the 80s (but that view though) and so does the interior of the MS A321, which is off since it's a relatively new plane. Maybe it's just those seat covers I don't like. The seats look comfortable; however. Thick cushy seats like that in Y are getting rare these days. Catering looks good! I tend to avoid flying on dry airlines, but for a short flight like this I guess I could live without alcohol :-P

    Thanks for sharing!



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