From Aswan, Abu Simbel is a day either way. By road it is $140 per person and eight hours; by air it is $400 per person and four hours, hotel to hotel. Same temples, same guide at the door, lunch on both. The flight costs $260 more and gives you four hours back.
So the useful way to put the choice is as a price per hour: on our 2026 prices, the flight costs $65 per person for every hour it saves. Whether that is worth it depends on what those four hours are worth to you — and on how many of you are travelling.
The two ways, side by side
Both are our own trips from Aswan, priced per person in US dollars.
| By road | By air | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per person | $140 | $400 |
| Hotel to hotel | 8 hours | 4 hours |
| Travel time | About 3 hours each way | A short flight each way |
| Entrance tickets | Included | Included |
| Guide | Included | Included |
| Transport | Private air-conditioned vehicle, hotel pickup | Return flight and airport transfers |
| Lunch | Included | Included, after the visit |
What the extra $260 buys
Four hours. The road trip is eight hours from your hotel and back, and about six of them are the drive — roughly three hours south through the desert in a private vehicle travelling with the convoy, and three hours back. The flight turns the same day into four hours.
Divide the difference by the time and it comes to $65 per person per hour saved. The flight is almost three times the price of the road trip, for half the time.
It adds up by the head
Because both prices are per person, the gap grows with the group:
- One traveller: $140 by road, $400 by air — $260 more.
- Two: $280 by road, $800 by air — $520 more.
- Four: $560 by road, $1,600 by air — $1,040 more.
For a family of four, four hours back costs over a thousand dollars. For a couple on a tight day it can be the easy call.
So which should you choose?
- By road if the day is free anyway. $140 buys the same temples, the same guide and the same lunch, and the early start is the price of the saving.
- By air if the four hours are worth $65 each to you — a cruise leaving Aswan that day, an evening flight onward, or someone in the group who should not sit through six hours on the road.
The road trip can be booked on its own page, Abu Simbel over land. The flight is not listed as a tour on the site yet — ask us for it and we will quote the same $400. If Abu Simbel is the add-on to a Nile cruise, what is included in a Nile cruise sets out what the cruise price already covers.
Where these figures come from
The road trip is our Abu Simbel over land tour as published on 29 September 2026: $140 per person, eight hours, about three hours' drive each way, with its list of what is and is not included. The flight is our own by-air trip from Aswan, priced by the company on 29 September 2026 at $400 per person, four hours from hotel to hotel, with the flight, entrance tickets, guide, airport transfers and lunch after the visit included. The hourly figure is the difference in price, $260, divided by the difference in time, four hours. Every price we publish sits in one comparable unit in the Egypt Travel Price Index.
Written by the Travel To Egypt team, Nazlet Al-Zanati Street, Luxor.