The currency of Egypt, the Egyptian Pound, has once again been significantly devalued this week. It is now worth a third less than it was on Monday. This presents current opportunities for affordable flight tickets, as many already budget-friendly tickets have been further reduced in price.
An exciting opportunity is the chance to travel to South America with Qatar Airways. A roundtrip flight from Cairo to Paraguay or Uruguay is available starting at €810. Tickets can be booked directly through LATAM (as codeshare) and paid in euros.
Unfortunately, the feeder flight from Cairo to Doha is in economy class. The journey continues to Sao Paulo in Qatar Airways business class. The QSuite is not always (but sometimes) available, and there is a connecting flight with LATAM from Sao Paulo.
One-way tickets are also available at reasonable prices. Here’s an overview:
Round trip:
- Asuncion, Paraguay for €810
- Montevideo, Uruguay for €840
- Florianopolis, Brazil for €1,149
- Porto Alegre, Brazil for €1,166
Before travelling, we recommend checking the travel and safety regulations for the respective destination. A visa for Egypt is available on arrival for approximately €23.
According to the LATAM website, tickets can be cancelled at any time without a fee. However, there is a fee for ticket changes, which can quickly become expensive. We recommend waiting a bit before making follow-up bookings, as the price for Qatar flights is unusually low.
The initial feeder flight from Cairo to Doha is in Qatar economy class. From Doha, the journey continues to Sao Paulo in business class, with a planned Boeing 777-200LR. Although Google Flights does not list the QSuite, it is occasionally used according to Expertflyer. If not, you will have to settle for the old Qatar business class (2-2-2 alignment).
From Sao Paulo, you will then fly in LATAM premium economy to the final destination. These are only economy seats, but at least the middle seat is kept vacant.
Search & Book
The booking period of the offer is unknown, but we assume that prices or exchange rates will be corrected soon. We found available dates from March to December 2024. The minimum stay is 24 hours.
Google Flights is only partially suitable for date searches. The ITA Matrix (instructions) works better. There, you can search with routing codes for connections in Doha and, if desired, narrow down the flight times. This can be done, e.g as follows:
Tickets can be booked directly on the LATAM website.
Travel to Cairo
Tickets to Cairo are currently quite expensive, even in economy class. Occasionally, tickets are usually available for around €300 roundtrip (excluding baggage).
Travel to Sphinx International Airport with Wizzair may also be an option. The low-cost airline sells tickets from Milan, Rome, and Budapest starting at €100 roundtrip. However, even carry-on luggage costs extra. A taxi ride from SPX Airport to CAI takes about an hour.
These are other halfway attractive options:
Mileage
The booking classes are as follows:
- Y for the feeder flight Cairo – Doha
- Z for the long-haul flight Doha – Sao Paulo in business class
- W for the connecting flight in premium economy
Unfortunately, all flights have a LATAM flight number. Therefore, there will likely be no miles for the Qatar segments at Oneworld frequent flyer programs.
Source: cruser1 on Flyertalk
Comments (6)
Hello all,
Great find, but it doesn’t seem to work. I tried booking this through LATAM’s website, got my payment processed, but the booking failed. I tried again by calling them, and they couldn’t process the booking as there was some issue with the CAI -> DOH connection. I think I was speaking with someone who hadn’t been working in the ticketing office for too long, so they couldn’t tell me what the problem was. I’ll try this again in the coming days and see if I can get it processed.
That’s most likely because LATAM tried to issue CAI-DOH (or DOH-CAI) in Business Class (Z)
There was an extensive discussion about that issue in our German comment section:
https://travel-dealz.de/deal/qatar-latam-business-kairo-suedamerika/
Unfortunately, we don’t have a solution yet regarding how to avoid it.
If LATAM fails at multiple attempts, you could try an (online) travel agency. But check that CAI-DOH-CAI are showing as Economy, not Business Class.
Any news? Did someone buy it? It perfectly fits my plans.
We have a few reports of success on the German site. And also a few negative ones, where flights have been cancelled. Most likely because LATAM or any OTA have tried to book CAI-DOH in Business Class, instead of Economy
I consider connnection at LHR from BA to LATAM. It may be less risky.
Hi Ditmar!
A very risky and, moreover, complicated deal.
And, you are perfectly right, the flights from EU to CAI, especially in Business Class, are extremely expensive.
Kind regards.