Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - Booking Class for SAA Business Class on *A Partners

Not sure if this is in the right forum or not - if not, sorry! :)

I'm trying to secure a business class seat on an SAA flight next March. No availability according to the ANA tool, but according to SAA, plenty of award availability (in fact, no seats sold at all).

I was wondering if the problem might relate to booking codes - according to my airline, an award comes out of the "I" bucket. SAA says they use "E" for awards. Does SAA also have an "I" bucket for *A partners, or do the partners pull from "E" as well? Has anyone recently had an award ticket with an SAA business segment, and if so, can you tell what class it was booked in?

I realize that SAA award availability will differ from what they release to *A partners, but is there any way to try and get a seat released? I've got about $2k in revenue tickets I need to book as well with SAA, not that they will care with regards to releasing an award seat. :(

Thanks in advance for any information or advice!

Sean

Not sure if you've gotten an answer to this or not, but at the least I'd suggest signing up for an Air Canada Aeroplan account and using their online Star Alliance award search tool to look for seats -- I've found their tool to be a bit smarter and easier to use than ANA's.

I doubt you could get SAA to release an award seat to the *A pool (the chances are slim enough that you'd be able to get them to release an award seat to a Voyager member), though it never hurt to ask, and in my experience their call center employees are pretty friendly. There is a chance that they'd open up more seats closer to the date of travel if they're not filled, but obviously that would be a risky proposition on your part.

Whose miles are you trying to redeem? Have you asked your home airline's staff for advice? If you're just trying to get to South Africa (as opposed to specifically flying SAA), you may be able to book a seat from the States to a European hub and then to South Africa, which actually doesn't add as much travel time as you might think (and is anyway not too trying in J).

I am not seeing any J award availability at the window either, but do see C and Y. Something does not seem right...

Has anyone recently had an award ticket with an SAA business segment, and if so, can you tell what class it was booked in?
Sean

I travelled in Business Class on SA262 CPT-FRA in Feb this year and it was an award ticket booked through BMI Diamond Club and can confirm that the class was I.

Thanks, colerc, State fan, and simon stingray, for your responses!

I've got an AC account so I'll check out their award search tool - didn't even know they had one...

It seems to me that SA is very stingy with their award seats - I had no problem getting F on SQ, TG, LX, and C on OZ, but I can't get a single C seat on SA for any one of several dates (I'm fairly flexible). Very disappointing.

simon stingray - thanks for confirming the booking code. I was hoping you might have had a different one as it would make the problem clear, but alas, it appears to be stingy award seat availability and nothing more.

Thanks again, all!

Sean

It seems to me that SA is very stingy with their award seats - I had no problem getting F on SQ, TG, LX, and C on OZ, but I can't get a single C seat on SA for any one of several dates (I'm fairly flexible). Very disappointing.

One great thing about SAA was that First award seats were usually very easy to come by on the routes which had First seats (wont be any routes soon :( ) - but Business awards have always been pretty scarce.

I just checked some routes again tonight and found quite a bit of J availability - weird.