Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - Award tickets: CPT-JNB

Hello,

I'm looking to fly an award ticket on SAA from CPT-JNB-DAR (Y-class) in June, 2012.

I see availability on the JNB-DAR leg pretty much every day that I look, but there's virtually no availability on CPT-JNB direct, even though there are 10+ flights per day. Do these usually become available later? I'd hate to wait too long, though, since the JNB-DAR leg is more expensive.

Should I:

1. Wait and see if CPT-JNB becomes available and risk losing the award availability on JNB-DAR?

2. Book a cheapo flight on Mango/1time/etc. from CPT to JNB and do the award booking from JNB to DAR only?

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I'm looking to fly an award ticket on SAA from CPT-JNB-DAR (Y-class) in June, 2012.

I see availability on the JNB-DAR leg pretty much every day that I look, but there's virtually no availability on CPT-JNB direct, even though there are 10+ flights per day. Do these usually become available later? I'd hate to wait too long, though, since the JNB-DAR leg is more expensive.

Should I:

1. Wait and see if CPT-JNB becomes available and risk losing the award availability on JNB-DAR?

2. Book a cheapo flight on Mango/1time/etc. from CPT to JNB and do the award booking from JNB to DAR only?

Thanks in advance!

There is usually tons of availability on CPT-JNB. My guess is they would def become available at some point.
Is it possible to change a SAA award to add the CPT-JNB later when it becomes available?
If you don't want to loose out on JNB-DAR then you should probably go with option 2 (SAA will charge you around R300 in fuel surcharge anyway for the CPT-JNB leg, so you can off set that against the cost of a ticket on a low cost airline),

I'll look into your suggestion. I think I'll be using Singapore Airlines miles to make the booking, so I'll check with them to see if it's possible to add a city later -- I'm guessing not, but who knows?

Also, I appreciate the tax estimate. That'll make it easier to compare apples to apples.