NW_Pilot wrote:

[Snip]

Looking like it will be British Airways to Frankfurt & Lufthansa Direct To
PDX



In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit the following:

1. Lufthansa is my absolute favorite European Airline.
2. Frankfurt (FRA/EDDF) is my absolute favorite airport, and I used to
fly through there somewhat regularly.
3. I spent 7 years in (then) West Germany while I was in the Air Force.

I hope you have no objection, I did download the current British Airways
(BA) and Lufthansa (LH) timetables. As best I can determine, BA does
not serve between South Africa and Germany. I would assume that you
would depart from Johannesburg (JNB). LH seems to be your best bet, for
as hassle free traveling as possible. I played around on the LH site
and found that there are two flights, LH 573 (JNB-FRA) and 468
(FRA-PDX). Looks like it might be a very long travel day for you
(approx 25 hours/25 minutes of transit time). However, the cost of the
ticket was a real Ouch!! You could buy a used car for the cost of that
ticket. Take a look at it for yourself.

Part of the reason I keep an eye on this is that I have some friends of
mine in Germany that I might go visit some day. So I check the routings
from SEA and PDX to FRA. I am a native of the Tacoma area (Puyallup,
specifically). I was very pleasantly surprised to find out (very
recently) that LH served from PDX to FRA. If I decide to go to Germany,
this will be the way that I will travel. The advertised flight time is
10 hours/10 minutes. Niicee! I would drive to PDX to catch that
flight, which is about a two-hour trip! Otherwise I would have to go to
Vancouver BC and catch LH from there. I would rather take a nonstop
flight to a destination, whenever possible.

A bit of history, If I may. When I was in the Air Force, I used to have
to go through some pretty stupid routings to travel from the west coast
to a "port" on the east coast (mainly McGuire Air Force Base, NJ) to
travel to Europe. In 1983, I had to travel back to the states, after
being in West Germany for over four years. When I had to travel back to
Germany, I caught the very first flight of the day to JFK from SEA, and
a nonstop flight at that. When I arrived at JFK, I had to check in at
the "MAC" desk there. Since I would not be able to meet a "show time"
at McGuire, I was put on the "PAN AM contract" and flew commercial from
JFK to FRA. Just my flight time alone was over 14 hours. I felt pretty
cranky when I got back. In 1989, I had to travel on official business
to Sacramento CA (McClellan Air Force Base). When my work was completed
there, I had to make arrangements to return to Germany. I managed to
get a ticket from SEA-LHR-FRA (I later found out that I broke a whole
lot of rules to get this ticket). Otherwise, I would have had to travel
from SEA-DFW-FRA (Note: DFW is the "port" where I reentered the US from
Germany so I would have had to travel to this "port" to return to
Germany). Again, that would have been about 14 hours of air time (not
including ground time). The reason that I really liked the SEA-LHR-FRA
routing is that I could travel from Puyallup to my apartment in a small
German village in (approx) 12 hours, total time (including ground time).

Apologize for the long post. I just wanted to pass on my two-bits to
make your return trip as easy as possible.

Enjoy your journey.

Rick