In retrospect, I should have known better but to be fair, there isn’t much art nor science to picking international flights. It’s more or less a crap shoot that gets slightly more in your favor if the airline isn’t a jerk and decides not to track your searches.
If one were to take the fastest flights from our home in South Dakota to the island of Mauritius, it would take about 30 hours with two layovers, but most know, there’s always a catch, especially for us and yes it does invoke our 11 year old, lovable (albeit neurotic) dog Charlie. Anyway, let’s backup and start from the beginning.
We began our journey on Friday night with a 9:30p flight out of South Dakota to Phoenix and while Phoenix is nowhere on the way to Mauritius, it is home to Lauren’s parents who were traveling with us after staying at our place for the previous week. As it just so happens, they were kind enough to babysit Charlie while we were gone, therefore he made the trip with us.
Three whining fueled hours later and we land in Phoenix, bid Lauren’s parents (and Charlie) adieu and we wait for our flight to Newark at 6am the next morning. Morning comes, we fly to Newark, wait six hours and then to Frankfurt, Germany while we wait another eight hours to head to Mauritius.
Lauren and I knew we were going to have long layovers this trip which is why we brought a board game to play while we were in Newark (Exit – The Abandoned Cabin, for those curious). With the lack of sleep and jet lag hitting us hard, we were hoping that Germany’s largest airport would keep us awake for the duration of our longest layover. Unfortunately, the international departures are separate from the rest of the airport, so there wasn’t much in our area of the terminal other than the odd duty free shop and one Hudson newsesque vendor. All of the restaurants and shops were all outside of our area so we hunkered down on a row of seats at our gate hoping to get a few hours of sleep before we depart.
At 3:30, we boarded our flight only to be informed of a mechanical issue with the plane and had to get off and wait for a new one. After another five hours, we were finally in the air on our way to Mauritius*.
We touched down around noon, local time on Monday, with a total of over 50 hours of travel time under our belts from the original flight out of South Dakota. Since the last time we slept and showered was Thursday night, we arrived, got situated in our room and immediately took a nap the went to dinner.
* quick note here. Our flight from Frankfurt to Mauritius was on a carrier called Eurowings, one I had never heard of until boarding the flight. It was a codeshare with Belgium Airlines which I thought we were booked on. The delay I can understand but the biggest issue was the lack of room on the plane itself. For those of you who have flown Allegiant, it was a very similar accommodation, which I wouldn’t normally mind except the flight from Frankfurt to Mauritius was 11.5 hours long. Suffice to say, I won’t book this airline again for a long haul flight.
Travel/Post Details:
- Featured Image – The mountain of Piton Canot watching over, just southeast of our villa
- Post spans travel from May 12-15 2023
- Accommodations
- Phoenix – Floor of Sky Harbor
- Frankfurt – the padded seats of Concourse C
- All other – The seat of an airplane at 30,000ft
- Mauritius – Lakaz Chamerel (Piton Canot Suite)
- Flights
- FSD > IWA (Allegiant)
- PHX > EWR (United)
- EWR > FRA (United)
- FRA > MRU (Eurowings)
to love and wander 
Mauritus is soooo far away! Thank you for posting your updates. Amy and I are going to take a long trip next year, and your flying experiences are some good info.
Thanks for staying in touch Josh! I’ve come to expect that airline travel is bound to have some disruptions when traveling half way across the planet but in reality, this wasn’t that bad. Lauren and I did decide we would do two things differently if we ran into this situation again though:
1. Get a lounge pass or an hourly hotel so we can decompress in Newark
2. We should have left the security area in Frankfurt instead of spending the entire 12 hours or so in the international wing so we could explore a little more to keep things interesting.
We actually crashed at one of the recliners once we got off that flight for a few hours and decided it wasn’t worth leaving but in hindsight (with the delay) it would’ve made life a lot more fun, not to mention the ability to get another passport stamp 🙂
Hope all is well with you and Amy, please tell her hi for both of us! I’m very curious where you two will end up next year!
We’re planning on an Okavango trip in May 2024! With CNH! So long as some COVID thing doesn’t mess things up like it did our first 2 years of trying to get to Galapagos…
Flying is so stressful for me. I’ve been trying to think of ways to make it better. I hate spending so much money, but the idea of winding up on the equivalent of a 12-hour flight on something like Allegiant is just awful. I wonder if couples ever try to buy one expensive big seat, and one cheap one, and swap seats as needed throughout a flight.
When you mention recliners above, are you meaning that an airport had some recliners you could nap in or something like that?
You’re doing the Okavango trip?! That’s incredible! Lauren and I debated doing it but couldn’t swing it for now. But I hope you keep me in mind because I would love to hear all about it, especially considering how well they organized Galapagos.
It’s personal preference but I really hate spending extra cash on flights (my opinion after that Mauritian section has caused me to rethink it though) because you rarely get there any faster and you still get there like everybody else. However, as we fly more and more airlines, I keep note of which ones to avoid as long as the price differences aren’t ridiculous. I typically do a lot of research on those carriers I haven’t flown before in book, but honestly got lazy for this one which bit me in the butt.
Frankfurt had recliners that are the equivalent of the typical airport seating (free of course) with tall backs and foot rests so they aren’t ideal but enough to stretch out and sleep in that’ll get you semi-horizontal. they were definitely a blessing after sleeping on the floor of the Phoenix airport the night prior.