Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - SAA: Seat selection advice needed

I'm about to take my first flight ever with South African Airlines (LHR-JNB) in Y. Advice on what seats to go for (or avoid) is greatfully accepted.

Best

Try to get a window seat on the upper deck. (Upper deck is Y on SAA's 744s.) There are storage bins below the windows, running the length of the upper deck cabin. You can use them for storage (obviously! :) ) and as a poor man's footrest. If you can't get an upper deck window, then try to get any upper deck seat, period. All of SAA's upper deck seats have an extra 3"-4" of pitch compared to the lower deck. Also, the upper deck is smaller, often quieter, and just has a more private feel.

Even if you get stuck on the lower deck, the service is still good. The seats are industry average, so don't expect to sleep like a baby! But at the same time, it's not like SAA are giving you a sub-standard product. In Y, SAA have good service (all seats have audio/video on-demand) and pretty decent food & wine.

Enjoy the trip!


Best regards,
Umhlanga

Like Bowman, I will be flying SAA in "the back cabin" early next month. This will be the first time on this carrier longhaul, though I've taken BA and LH down to SAfrica many times in the past...SAA has always lost out because it was not a STAR or ONEWORLD carrier. Now that it is, it appears to be preferable to LH in the back cabin because of the seat pitch.

I can right now opt between flying ex-LHR or ex-FRA. FRA has a slight edge because of the fare, though LHR has better connections for me inbound/return to Canada on AC (i.e. more opportunity to use my elite upgrades on this route).

LHR is operated with the B744s, so obviously the advantage -- as a STARGold -- is my ability to book my seat up in the upper deck. The ambiance plus extra leg room certainly commends this. However, FRA is operated with the new A346, which I believe have a very decent (for economy) 33" pitch. And I'd like to spend a couple of days in Germany rather than in the UK.

So I'd appreciate any other comments about which airplane SAA regulars prefer. As well, I guess the SAA lounge at LHR is its own, while at FRA the carrier uses on of the LH lounges.

If spending time in Germany is important to you, and if you don't mind the 33" pitch on the A346, then fly via FRA on the Airbus. If you choose the A340-600, then try to get seat 73D. If you can't get 73D, then try for 45 D or G. 73D has a hatch in front of it instead of a seat, thus giving you more legroom. (Interestingly, the hatch is actually an emergency exit from the crew rest area, which is located below the passenger deck.) 45D & G are the aisle seats in the centre section of the over-wing exit row. They have good legroom.

If spending time in Germany were not an issue, then I would go with the upper deck of the 744 via LHR, no doubt. The 744 upper deck beats the 744 main deck Y, or any part of Y on the A340.


Best regards,
Umhlanga

Thanks for the recommendations of specific seats on the A346. I agree the B744 upper deck is the way to go, but unfortunately the client is looking at the fare differential and sees the base fare of £660 from LHR and E660 from FRA. That makes the UK flight almost a quarter more expensive, and my separate AC flight fare options from Canada to LHR versus FRA cannot offset that differential. I'll make my final decision later this week. (The direct flights from JFK and IAD are not any cheaper, and of course are on the A343, which would be brutal in the back!

Actually I know the IAD flight is a 346, and SAA claim that the JFK flight has now been changed to an A346.

You're right, I see that these two flights from the US gateways are now A346s which may make me consider them instead of going via Europe and spending an extra day of travel in each direction. The fare is $1844 ex-IAD but the problem is adding a connecting flight from/to YYZ, and I'd have to do an overnight. (I could not face such a long journey with a 6:40am departure that would require me to be up at 3am to be at the airport early enough for customs/immigration preclearance!) However, an overnight out a Dulles would give me a chance to spend the day prior at the Smithsonian Aviation collection...something to consider.

I can get a hotel room at the CP Dulles for U$89, but the YYZ-IAD-YYZ flight is showing at U$505! Though could use an Aeroplan award...

Thanks for the update on the aircraft type.

Thanks for the advice. I managed to get 79K and 80H.

Best

Good choice, Bowman. In 79, you'll be in a bulkhead row, so your armrests won't move. But you'll have good legroom.

Shareholder, don't count out IAD entirely just because you'll have to wake up so early. In fact, that works to your advantage on long daytime flights such as IAD-JNB. You'll leave IAD around 1pm Eastern, and your body won't feel like sleeping until MUCH later - probably shortly after the flight takes off from its stop in DKR bound for JNB. At that point, you'll only get 6 or 7 hours of sleep (remember that meal service and immigration cards will occupy nearly an hour) at most before landing in JNB. If you tire yourself out the night before departure, and then try to sleep as much as you can during the flight (obviously you can't sleep through the stop at DKR), and wake up 3 hours out of JNB (9am JNB time), then you will have managed to synchronize your internal clock fairly well with local time.

Of course all that is premised on the assumption that you can manage to sleep at all in a Y seat! :p

Of course all that is premised on the assumption that you can manage to sleep at all in a Y seat! :p


I generally have no problem adjusting to time zones heading eastward, so that's not a major issue. I do hate early mornings, however! ;)

And I'd be giving up a pretty certain certificate upgrade to business class on my AC sectors between YYZ-FRA in each direction. Plus a 50% mileage bonus on my AC segments (which amounts to another 3951 AE miles), and a "loss" of about 4K in status miles, since the direct flights are about 2K miles shorter than routing through Europe.

I don't mind having a couple of days in Europe going over, and would have that arriving in the early morning and heading to SAfrica the following day in the mid-evening. The return is not all that much longer, as there is a short connection in FRA and I get back the next day in either case...remember I still have to get to/from YYZ, which although a short flight has lots of connecting time to pass in the lounge.

And it's an A346 whichever way I go...LHR not being worth the cost for the upper deck.

Will post my decision once I've made it and booked, and let you know if I was able to get any of those coveted seats -- though I am not a great fan of bulkhead seats since I like to have places to stow the items I use during a flight. I find leg room adequate even at 32-33 inches as long as I have an aisle seat and am able to get in and out even when the person in front has reclined his/her seat.

Decisions...Decisions...

The client has decided to book me via FRA, so it will be the A340-600 for 10-hours instead of the 14-hour plus stop-overs from the USA. However, the seating chart for the FRA-JNB flight shows 73D being available, so I have asked them to have their TA book it for me. BTW on all the flights I was checking all of row 45 has shown booked. Is this because SAA holds these back to be released at check-in?

And my AC flights in both directions show the I-class upgrade inventory to be in pretty good shape, with paid J/C showing 9 each two weeks out, meaning my elite upgrade certificates should get me into the front cabin over the Atlantic.

Thanks again for all the advice, Umhlanga. I've waited for almost three years to have SAA as a STAR member so I could give them a try on one of these trips down there. Maybe some day I will have a wealthier client who can afford to fly me in the front cabin. ;)

Okay, so I've been using the advice in this thread to find a good seat, and the seating chart that comes up on various ITN res booking sites to ID availability (even though I am not using these sites to purchase my flights). In this case, I was able to find 73D open from FRA-JNB. However, when I downloads SAA's seat chart for the A340-600, it appears it is 74D that is the seat I want as 73D doesn't exist, being the "hatch" location. (I am sure I read a post about such discrepencies but cannot find it now.) Can anyone please clarify this?

Beyond that, I don't generally like sitting that far back for a variety of reasons, but does service suffer (i.e. meal choices)?

SAA improved Y pitch on the A340s by ripping out a row. I have not flown in Y since the change, but those who have say the new good seat is 73D, not 74D. (See, e.g., http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/2881158/6/#ID2881158 Replies 18, 20, 21)

For what it's worth, don't trust much on SAA's site. The timetable's up to date, but that's about it. The seat plans aren't current, their press releases are horribly misorganized (and often posted when they're already out-of-date), their route map still shows Atlanta as a full-fledged SAA destination, and doesn't show Dulles as one, even though SAA have now flown to IAD for more than a year!), they have sections for menus & wine lists which have no content...I could go on!

Thank God the on-board product is much better than the online one!


Best regards,
Umhlanga