Flying to Africa
Photo: Macvivo at English Wikipedia (Original text: Samwise Gamgee), CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Airfares can be cheaper when booked from the European capital that has a strong colonial link to your destination, which typically means from Brussels, Lisbon, London, and Paris. Egypt also has plentiful, cheap connections with the Middle East & Europe, Kenya, which is increasingly an important air travel hub, owing to its strategic location on the continent, South Africa and a handful of West African destinations (e.g. Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Madeira, Morocco) popular with British tourists and accessible with cheap holiday flights.
Airlines such as Emirates, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways & Turkish Airlines have greatly expanded their services to Africa, and offer connections to many major African cities at competitive rates than other European airlines.
If you have additional travel time, check to see how your total fare quote to Africa compares with a round-the-world fare. Don't forget to add in the extra costs of additional visas, departure taxes, ground transportation, etc. for all those places outside of Africa.
See your destination's article for more specific information on flights. Bear in mind that many African countries only offer a few international flights each day, or in some cases, each week. While it isn't hard to reach South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, or Egypt, getting to Malawi or Togo can be quite a challenge.
Johannesburg O.R. Tambo International Airport, Addis Ababa and Nairobi can be considered to be the main hubs of sub-Saharan Africa, so many flights to other parts of Africa will connect in one of these hubs.
From EuropeThere are more flights to Africa from Europe than from any other continent.
From the AmericasThe only countries with direct flights to Africa are the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina
From AsiaIf you're flying to a smaller African country, many of Africa's major airlines all have extensive coverage in Africa and fly to a handful of Middle Eastern destinations.
From OceaniaIf you want to fly in directly from Australia, your choices are limited to fly to South Africa or Mauritius.
See also
Sources and licences
- Guide text adapted from the Wikivoyage article "Flying to Africa" by its contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikivoyage · Contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Photo: Macvivo at English Wikipedia (Original text: Samwise Gamgee), CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons