Douala, Cameroon - wow, what a surprise to see that mentioned here. I lived in Cameroon for 18 years, so....
I personally would recoment flying Swiss - as in my experience they offer better service than AF - but AF flies everyday and Swiss doesn't. As far as award availability goes - I have found availabilty be be pretty good on Swiss using their own miles or miles from other programs. Something to consider: even though Swiss isn't part of Oneworld now, they are partners with just about all of them.
Here is what I would have done if I wanted to fly Business class to Douala and back from CDG:
1) Access priceline from Ebay to get 1500 Ebay Anything Points per hotel stay purchased. Purchase 27 individual 1 night stays at 1 star hotels in a cheap area - winning bid of $20-$22 each, total cost of $28-$30 each. I never plan to actually stay at any of these places so where I bid for is insignificant. Ebay points from priceline post within 24 hours.
Anyting points earned: 40,500
$810 spent
2) Convert 40,000 Ebay Anything points to 60,000 Asia miles using current double miles promotion at
www.points.com. Full Asia miles credited within a week.
3) Book CDG-ZHR-DLA and back on LX in Business class with my 60,000 Asia miles.
Total cost: $810 for the priceline bookings plus tax (about the same as the cheapest econ tickets). A couple hours of time, no more.
(If you have time, you could earn up to 25000 Anything Points at a cost of less than $100 (I am) - but this takes a lof of time signing up for things, cancelling, etc. Above would be easy and straightforward).
Concerning earning miles on Swiss and SN Brussells Airlines - both of these will give you full AA miles (among many other options) - very useful in my opinion.
I have flown AF many times to/from DLA and they aren't too bad - but they have lost my luggage 50% of the time
so I try to aviod them now.
I also prefer ZRH/BRU as hubs to CDG - so as I am never originating in CDG these other airlines are my choice.
KLM also flies to DLA (from AMS) - but its a longer flight because you stop in Kenya before continueing to DLA (same plane).
And I have never been brave enough to try Cameroon Airlines. I have heard too many stories.
