Royal Air Maroc just announced a pretty noteworthy flight, as it’s both their longest route ever, and also their route that’s furthest East.
In this post:
Royal Air Maroc Will Fly To Beijing
Royal Air Maroc will launch 3x weekly flights between Casablanca and Beijing as of January 16, 2020. The route will operate 3x weekly with the following schedule:
AT230 Casablanca to Beijing departing 5:00PM arriving 11:55AM (+1 day)
AT231 Beijing to Casablanca departing 1:55PM arriving 7:55PM
The flight will cover a distance of 6,273 miles, and is blocked at 11hr55min eastbound and 13hr westbound. It will operate eastbound on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and westbound on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.
Royal Air Maroc will use a Boeing 787-9 for the route, featuring a total of 302 seats, including 26 business class seats and 276 economy seats.
Royal Air Maroc’s 787-9 business class
RAM will be operating to Beijing’s new Daxing International Airport, which will be opening shortly.
RAM’s CEO has said that this route will “enable us to respond to a strong need expressed by business operators from the two countries and will participate in further strengthening trade and economic cooperation between Morocco and China.”
While Royal Air Maroc has an extensive transatlantic route network and network to Europe and Africa, their service to Asia is quite limited. Their only flights to Asia as of now are to Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, so this will be their first Far East destination.
While the flights are already in the schedule, as of the time of this post they’re not yet bookable, as inventory is zeroed out. I expect this to change soon.
Royal Air Maroc’s 787-9 business class
Royal Air Maroc Joining Oneworld In 2020
Royal Air Maroc is expected to join the oneworld alliance in 2020, so this is potentially a cool way to get to Beijing on oneworld.
Redeem Miles On Royal Air Maroc
Eventually it will be possible to earn and redeem oneworld miles on Royal Air Maroc, though that’s not the case yet. The good news is that there’s one really good niche redemption opportunity, which I also consider to be one of the best award redemption sweet spots out there.
You can redeem just 44,000 Etihad Guest miles for a one-way business class ticket on any Royal Air Maroc route. So not only could you book Casablanca to Beijing for 44,000 miles, but you could potentially even include a connection from North America on the same ticket.
Royal Air Maroc’s business class catering
Royal Air Maroc’s North American destinations include Boston, Miami, Montreal, New York, and Washington. That’s a heck of a use of miles.
Etihad Guest is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou, and Capital One, so there are quite a few ways to earn these miles.
- 4x points at restaurants, on up to $50,000 in purchases annually
- 4x points at U.S. supermarkets, on up to $25,000 in purchases annually
- 3x points on flights booked directly with airlines or through amextravel.com
- $325
- Access to Amex Offers
- Redeem Amex Points Towards Airfare
- $375
- Earn 5x points on flights purchased directly from airlines or through Amex Travel (up to $500k/year)
- $200 Annual Uber Credit
- Amex Centurion Lounge Access
- $695
- Earn 1.5x on purchases of $5,000 or more in a single transaction on up to $2MM per calendar year
- Redeem Points For Over 1.5 Cents Each Towards Airfare
- Amex Centurion Lounge Access
- $695
- 2x points on purchases up to $50k then 1x
- Access to Amex Offers
- No annual fee
Bottom Line
It’s cool to see Royal Air Maroc not only launch their longest route ever, but also to expand into the Far East. There currently aren’t any nonstop flights between Morocco and China, so this opens up some nice new opportunities.
Best of all, redeeming Etihad Guest miles for Royal Air Maroc’s business class is a spectacular value.
@ Ryan: concerning policy change if true that basically kills this deal. Has anyone else experienced this since mid August?
@ Ryan: this new restriction sounds pretty terrible if true. Has anyone else experienced this since mid August?
Please do Singapore sometime in the future too! It would draw in more passengers coming in from Australia to Morocco!
@DC Yukon
Did you know why it was mostly transpacific for flights from US to Asia? It has nothing to do with PanAm.
The answer is: IATA
Unless IATA changes, it's always going to be routed through Pacific to Asia when possible.
As an AA flyer, you still have options through TYO and recently CAN. It's not that that HKG is now trash or anything, I don't think you need to avoid HKG just to transit. Maybe just avoid weekends, kids can't skip school forever.
Wondering if China is subsidizing this route given their major efforts to solidify relationships with African governments.
Now it’s will be time for AA to change award routing to Asia from the US (especially East Coast) to permit Transatlantic routes in addition to Transpacific routes. More so now that folks may feel less certain about connecting to Asian destinations via HKG or, depending on how Beijing reacts (or overreacts) to protests in HKG, other transit points in mainland China. The aviation world has changed a lot since the transpacific only policy was...
Now it’s will be time for AA to change award routing to Asia from the US (especially East Coast) to permit Transatlantic routes in addition to Transpacific routes. More so now that folks may feel less certain about connecting to Asian destinations via HKG or, depending on how Beijing reacts (or overreacts) to protests in HKG, other transit points in mainland China. The aviation world has changed a lot since the transpacific only policy was adopted decades ago (shortly after the AA/PanAm frequent flyer programs split up decades ago, as I recall).
Has anyone been able to search award space on this flight. Even though RAM has it as a selection on their website, it gives an error when searching.
With so much publicity, I give the EU 44k award max 6 months more to live.
Would be a "game changer" (looking at ya, Kenya) if I can use 44K EY points from YUL to PKX via CMN with a 2 week of stopover in Morocco.
EDIT: on Etihad's webpage it says, that stopover and open jaw's are permitted.
Holy crap, with Etihad being a Citi transfer partner, I just found my new go-to way of getting from the US to Asia. When it (hopefully) becomes possible to redeem AAdvantage miles on RAM this’ll be even better...
@Zich - I spent a lot of time in Morocco this year. Casablanca is a snoozefest - there is the huge Mosque - I believe the largest Mosque in the world open to non Muslims. Fez can be fun but it is a tourist trap, big time - every corner someone is trying to sell you a rug or leather bag or pottery, its very intense. Marrakesh is great, very laid back, cosmopolitan, etc. Rabat/Sale...
@Zich - I spent a lot of time in Morocco this year. Casablanca is a snoozefest - there is the huge Mosque - I believe the largest Mosque in the world open to non Muslims. Fez can be fun but it is a tourist trap, big time - every corner someone is trying to sell you a rug or leather bag or pottery, its very intense. Marrakesh is great, very laid back, cosmopolitan, etc. Rabat/Sale is a nice choice for some history/culture and not an overrun big city. The Blue city of Chefchaouen is a beautiful site - aka instagram heaven - but lacks in any good tourist stuff - restaurants are eh, no real history, no authentic shopping, etc. Its a place to see, aint much to do. The desert is really good - we spent a night on the outskirts of the desert and then 1 night "glamping" in a nice tent in the Sahara. Skoura was a really nice area too but only if you are going to extend a trip, on its own its not worth a stop over. The Atlas mountains can be rugged and amazing with some small towns. There are a few movie studios too that you can tour that shoot a lot of big Hollywood Movies and Game of Thrones in Morocco and the sets are still up to see. Its a great very friendly culture all around and we enjoyed our time. We did hire a private guide to drive us the entire trip which was a new experience for us. The roads there, while they seem safe (except in the cities, they drive worse than NYC and I am from NY) have a lot of police checking for speed as well as just checking papers in general - you get pulled over a lot. We got pulled over 3x I think in like 10 or 11 days. If you have specific questions just ask and I'll try to remember to check back.
And yes, I used the 44k trick to go from NY > Casablanca round trip, for the 44k you get a nice value out of their 787-9 business class seat.
RE: the quote at bottom, I recently tried to book IAD -> CMN -> MAD using Guest Miles on RAM, and I was informed that a policy change went into effect mid-August where they're charging miles per SEGMENT rather than per DIRECTION. So, it appears that the free extra segment is no more on RAM.
"You can redeem just 44,000 Etihad Guest miles for a one-way business class ticket on any Royal Air Maroc route....
RE: the quote at bottom, I recently tried to book IAD -> CMN -> MAD using Guest Miles on RAM, and I was informed that a policy change went into effect mid-August where they're charging miles per SEGMENT rather than per DIRECTION. So, it appears that the free extra segment is no more on RAM.
"You can redeem just 44,000 Etihad Guest miles for a one-way business class ticket on any Royal Air Maroc route. So not only could you book Casablanca to Beijing for 44,000 miles, but you could potentially even include a connection from North America on the same ticket."
Go to Marrakesh and/or Fez. Get out of Casablanca
Anyone has a good itinerary in Morocco (like one week)? Heard Casablanca is quite boring. What about transportation between the cities?
@HChris, I spent a week in Morocco one night. A quick layover is enough.
If I remember correctly, stopovers are not allowed on the 44k Etihad ticket, correct? Wouldn't be bad to redeem 44k for J all the way to Beijing while spending a week in Morocco...
As soon as I read the title, the 44k is the first thing that came to mind. You're right, that's some serious value (if you for some unique reason your travel plans include going from Miami to Beijing). I still plan to use my 44 k for MIA-CMN-DOH but that's a good find!