[pandemic]

Hi, can anyone who has been to Almaty in the past few months give me an idea of the airfare cost from the U.S.? We are flying from Philadelphia, but any major city should give me a comparable price. Also, I've heard that Golden Rule travel is a good option for pricing - if anyone has any other good sources, please pass them along! Thanks!

[JenniferKaz]

We live in Allentown, PA and flew April 2006.

We flew Lufthansa from Newark through Frankfurt into Astana, and then home from Alamty (we were adopting from Astana and wanted to save a flight leg on the way there).

People raved about Golden Rule when we were getting ready to travel, but I did not find their prices any better. I tried contacting Eldo at Golden Rule for a week and got no response so I booked myself.

We booked the adoption fare, which was about $100 more, and really not worth it. It saves the cost of changing the return flight home, but limits which flights you can switch to because the 'adoption fare' is a special fare and they only allow so many seats per fare per flight. If I did it again I would have just paid the normal fare and paid the $150 or so to switch flights. Once you are in country and far enough along in the process you have a pretty good idea when you wil fly home.

When I originally booked my tickets they were in and out of Astana. When I came home I flew from Alamty to Frankfurt (to Newark) which was a different departure city than my original tickets. Lufthansa should have charged a fee, but when I went to the Lufthansa office next to the Hyatt in Almaty (where we stayed in Alamty) they felt bad that I had a child to travel with and she waived the fee. The Lufthansa people at the airport were mean when I tried to change tickets there.

Other families in our area flew out of Phila. on British Air through London, but i think they had an addition stop in Russia for fuel.

Newark was a breeze coming home for immigration....both for our Kaz and guatemala adoption. We wait in line about 5 minutes and were at the desk for about 2 minutes, no longer than when we went through without adoption paperwork.

[DET62]

I used Golden Rule when I traveled last year and I feel like they got me good deals on airfare. They have the ability to get a humanitarian fare, I think. I used a guy named Brady, not Eldo.

There aren't that many airlines that go to Almaty. I flew Lufthansa and they were very nice.

I think most families either have to go thru Frankfurt, London, or Amsterdam to get to Almaty. I was told Frankfurt has more flight options.

Good luck!
Dee

[hml1976]

We flew this past summer and used Eldo at Golden Rule, we also used Eldo back in 2005. We flew KLM because we like them better than Lufthansa but I think it was about the same. We flew Charleston, SC to Detroit to Amsterdam to Almaty. On the way back we went through Memphis instead of Detroit.

We've gone through immigration in both Detroit and Memphis and Memphis was actually easier, although both were fine. I've heard that JFK and Atlanta are the worst but don't quote me on that

Eldo's a little quirky but he's always been great to us!

[KaronD]

We did much of the same above. my husband flew the humanitarian rate of $1500 and I flew the adoption rate of $2000. I do not reccomend the adoption rate. I just wanted to warn you that even children under 2 years old must pay for international flights. We ended up paying $800 for our 8 month old son.

[DET62]

Just a quick post to say that when I came home with my son, the immigration experience here in Atlanta was a breeze. We were done in like 15 minutes. There was only one person ahead of us.

When I brought my daughter home from Russia in 2004 we came into JFK in New York, and we were in there waiting around for about 45 minutes, although we mostly just sat. It wasn't bad.

Some of it may depend on the time of day or day of week you come in.

Dee