After spending a couple of weeks in Mauritius, it was time to leave and head on to the second part of our trip – a self-drive safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa.
To get there, we flew from Mauritius to Johannesburg on Air Mauritius. It was only a four hour flight because Mauritius is an island off the east coast of Africa. I wasn’t sure what to expect ahead of time as we’d never flown on Air Mauritius and, with it being the flag carrier of one of the smaller countries on earth, it’s not an airline that gets a lot of attention.
It ended up being a decent flight. The plane was clean and fresh feeling (well, other than my footrest), they served a complimentary meal and snack in economy – along with beer and wine – which was more than I’d expecting on a relatively short flight and there was a surprisingly good selection of in-flight entertainment options.
Here’s a full review of our flight with Air Mauritius.
Air Mauritius Economy Class – Mauritius (MRU) To Johannesburg (JNB) – Flight Review
Flight: Air Mauritius 359
Route: Mauritius (MRU) – Johannesburg (JNB)
Scheduled Departure Time: 9:25am January 27, 2023
Scheduled Arrival Time: 11:50am January 27, 2023
Aircraft Type: Airbus A350-900
Seats: 38G (me) and 38J (Shae)
Flight Class: Economy
Checking In
Shae and I each had a bag that we needed to check, so we made sure we got to the airport a couple of hours before our flight to give us enough time to get that done and get through security. That ended up being sufficient, but it might be worth giving yourself a little extra leeway as the check-in desk agents didn’t seem to be the most efficient.
I’d already checked us in online and had our boarding passes, but there wasn’t a separate bag drop section – you just have to join the regular check-in line to check your bags. There was a bit of a line when we arrived, but nothing that looked untoward.
However, the line moved more slowly than expected despite a few desks being open. Once we finally reached the front of the line, it took much longer than expected for the agent to check our bags. She was friendly enough, but it was like that scene in Zootopia with the sloth as the DMV agent.
We then went through security and headed towards our gate. The Amedee Maingard Lounge was right next to our gate which we had access to via our Priority Pass memberships, but we didn’t end up going in as it was almost time to board.
The Flight
The economy class cabin was in a 3-3-3 formation.
As you can see in the photo below, there was a small pillow waiting for us at our seats.
I’d decided to try my luck when picking our seats and it worked out. We weren’t able to select our seats until check-in and I noticed that the front half of the plane was fairly full, while the back half had fewer seats selected at that stage. As a couple sitting on a plane with a 3-3-3 formation, one of you is looking at getting the middle seat or having someone sit between you.
Neither situation is ideal, so I picked Shae as having the window seat (38J) and me having the aisle seat (38G), leaving the middle seat spare. I figured that if someone was assigned – or assigned themselves – the middle seat between us, we could ask them if Shae and I could sit together and they’d get either the aisle or window seat which would surely be preferable to them. By picking our seats like this though, we minimized the likelihood that someone would actively pick our set of three seats to sit in and, sure enough, it worked. The economy class cabin wasn’t full, so there were some spare seats left around the cabin including between the two of us.
There was a regular-sized tray table that folded down and out.
In the seatback pocket was a pair of headphones. I listened to podcasts on the flight using my own headphones, so I didn’t need to make use of them. However, they looked like they were better quality than the cheap earphones that you sometimes get in economy class on other airlines.
Having said that, they did seem to leak some of the sound to people sitting nearby. Shae had started watching a movie before I started listening to the podcasts and I could hear some of the movie noise.
There was a footrest for additional comfort. Mine had something yellow stuck on there, although it didn’t seem to be gum. While some people will be grossed out by that, the rest of the cabin seemed to have been cleaned well. I don’t use those types of footrests on planes anyway, so it didn’t affect me.
Every seat had its own in-flight entertainment screen.
There was a surprisingly good selection of in-flight entertainment options on the flight. There were movies, TV shows, music, games, etc. as expected and there was a more comprehensive selection than I’d been expecting.
For movies in particular, there were lots of new Holly wood movies available.
Beneath the IFE screen were USB and headphone outlets.
There was a regular power outlet between our seats as well.
The cabin didn’t have air nozzles overhead which I was initially apprehensive about. However, they kept it a reasonable temperature throughout the flight, so this didn’t end up being an issue.
The restrooms were your standard-sized (i.e. not big) economy class restrooms.
An interesting feature on the in-flight entertainment was the ability to watch an under-plane camera, so I turned that on while we were taking off.
Shae doesn’t like watching the nose and under-plane camera views that some airlines offer, so she just gazed out the window.
About 30 minutes into the flight the flights attendants started a breakfast meal service. I hadn’t done much research ahead of time, so I’d thought that perhaps they’d throw us a bag of pretzels seeing as it was only a four hour flight. However, it turns out that even in economy class they provide a full meal.
The meal itself was average, but I appreciated that they provided plenty of food. They gave a choice between a Spanish omelet and a cheese omelet. I don’t like cheese, so I selected the Spanish omelet. Based on what I saw from another passenger’s selection, it looked like the cheese omelet had some kind of sausage with it.
My Spanish omelet on the other hand came with baked beans and some kind of greens. The omelet wasn’t stellar, but it was decent enough. It was served with a bread roll, pain au chocolat, juice carton and a packet of passionfruit jam. Neither the bread roll nor the pain au chocolat were very good as they were pretty dry – particularly the bread roll.
In addition to a full meal being provided, I was also surprised that it was served with silverware rather than just plasticware. The silverware had Air Mauritius branding on it.
A couple of hours later the flight attendants came back through the cabin serving additional drinks and a small snack. Drinks included soft drinks as well as complimentary beer and wine.
The service during the flight was friendly – better than you’ll generally get in economy class on domestic airlines.
They don’t offer it on all their routes, but our Air Mauritius flight had Wi-Fi available. It’s complimentary if you’re flying with them in Business Class or if you have Kestrelflyer Gold status. Otherwise, this is the pricing:
- 1 Hour – US$9.95 – 75MB
- 3 Hour – US$14.95 – 150MB
- Full Flight – US$19.95 – 300 MB
The rest of the flight was uneventful and we arrived in Johannesburg about 1.5 hours later.
Final Thoughts
We had a good experience flying on Air Mauritius from Mauritius to Johannesburg, South Africa. They provided both a meal and snack during the roughly four hour flight, had a comfortable enough seat to sit in, decent in-flight entertainment options and friendly flight attendants.
While I wouldn’t go out of my way to fly with Air Mauritius, I’d be more than happy to fly with them again in the future if we happened to return to Mauritius.
How We Booked Our Flights
We booked our flights as a one-way award with Air Canada’s Aeroplan program. For 115,000 points, we flew Dallas-Fort Worth to Frankfurt on Lufthansa in business class and then Eurowings Discover in business class from Frankfurt to Mauritius. That would’ve cost us 110,000 points, but we made Mauritius a stopover for 15 days which only cost us the extra 5,000 points and added on this economy flight from Mauritius to Johannesburg in economy class on Air Mauritius as the next stage of our trip was Kruger National Park in South Africa.
In addition to the 115,000 Aeroplan points per person, we also paid $210.10 Canadian Dollars (~$157 USD) per person in taxes and fees.
See All Posts From This International Trip
- Lions & Quokkas & Scorpions, Oh My: A Month In Australia, South Africa & More
- We Were Denied Boarding To Australia – Here’s Why
- Flight Review: Lufthansa Business Class – Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) To Frankfurt (FRA)
- Flight Review: Eurowings Discover Business Class – Frankfurt (FRA) To Mauritius (MRU)
- Some Thoughts On Mauritius
- Hotel Review: Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa
- Hotel Review: Le Méridien Ile Maurice (Mauritius)
- Restaurant Review: Sunset Filaos In Pointe Aux Piments, Mauritius
- 20 Fun & Interesting Things To Do In Mauritius (+ Many Bonus Ideas)
- Hotel Review: Holiday Inn Mauritius Mon Tresor
- Flight Review: Air Mauritius Economy Class – Mauritius (MRU) To Johannesburg (JNB)
- The Awesome Drive Between Johannesburg & Kruger National Park
- 50 Animal Photos From Kruger National Park In South Africa Taken With Our Phones
- Kruger National Park: 13 Tips For A Successful Self-Drive Safari
- Elephant Kisses – Meeting Tswale In South Africa
- Kruger National Park: 30 Photos Taken With Shae’s Nikon Camera
- Doing A Kruger Park Bush Braai With Royal Safaris
- Marloth Park: Like Living In The Best Zoo Ever
- Hotel Review: InterContinental Johannesburg O.R. Tambo Airport, South Africa
- Flight Review: Qatar Airways Business Class (Qsuites) – Johannesburg (JNB) To Doha (DOH) To Miami (MIA)
- Hotel Review: Hyatt Regency Oryx Doha, Qatar
vincent says
Pleasantly surprised by your positive experience on MK 🙂 I haven’t flown them in forever, but my parents are scheduled to fly them to/from LHR in a few months (thank you Aeroplan!) so I’m hoping it will be good too. Interesting there were no J seats to JNB; been seeing 9+ on so many flights on their european routes and the challenge was exclusively finding the TATL J seats. Pity you didn’t get to try the lounge. I think it’s one of the better ones, especially for Priority Pass.
stephen says
In the end we would’ve had time to go in the lounge as boarding was a little delayed, but that’s good to know for the future.
I’d been hoping that J availability would open up the closer we got to the flight, but no luck unfortunately. It wasn’t a huge issue on such a short flight, but I’m glad you found availability on the flights to/from the UK.