American Express Membership Rewards - Platinum companion ticket on S. African

I am not an Amex platinum member but am considering becoming one because my company is flying me business class to South Africa and I want to bring my wife. This free companion ticket would be the only reason I want the card. Before I sign up, can anyone tell me how restrictive the freebie is on South African? Specifically I need to know what booking classes are ok and which ones are not.

Even more specifically I noticed that I could get an ORD-JNB ticket for under $9,000. It is code "J" (JSRT1 to be precise). Is this good enough to get a free companion? Or is there some astronomically higher price I need to pay for a different code (like $15,000) to get it? (note, my company will not buy me that expensive ticket in it doesnt need to, making the whole thing moot).

Will appreciate any help at all!

I recently booked a companion ticket from JFK to JNB and return. You will not be able to use that $9000 fare. It will be more in the neighborhood of $13000 to $14000 for the two of you. I needed to book last minute so I figured $7000 a person is pretty good to South Africa. The problem in general with the 241s is that Amex only uses the highest fares.

thanx for the qreply

This thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=739396) has the details for all the IAP participants.

It includes the following bits:
South African Airways
Booking Class: J -- Business Class
Y -- Coach Class (beyond CPT/JNB flights on single-cabin aircraft operated by SA Express SA/YB)
Fare Basis: C
Gateways: New York - JFK Washington DC - IAD

You cannot use ORD as your gateway based on this information. And while it books into the J bucket ($8829+) you actually need to purchase from the C bucket ($10217+). If you could convince your company that you'd just pay the difference the $2000 extra to bring along your wife would be a pretty good bargain. I believe that they'd just put you on a UA flight to get to IAD to pick up the JNB flight so the gateway thing probably doesn't matter.

sbm12 - Thank you for looking at this. I am not worried about the gateway. I know I have to get to JFK or IAD. Not a prob. When I called Amex Platinum (I was able to do so with a friend who has the card), the best eligible fare they quoted was in the $14-15k range... far too much for me. If what you are saying is that somehow there is a $10217 ticket available that would be eligible, I can get my company to pay for that. I will try them again.

As it stands now, I was able to book LH all the way and get a companion ticket with a fare of <$9000. But that has two overnight flights and a 10 hour layover in FRA. SA would be ideal.

sbm12 - Thank you for looking at this. I am not worried about the gateway. I know I have to get to JFK or IAD. Not a prob. When I called Amex Platinum (I was able to do so with a friend who has the card), the best eligible fare they quoted was in the $14-15k range... far too much for me. If what you are saying is that somehow there is a $10217 ticket available that would be eligible, I can get my company to pay for that. I will try them again.

As it stands now, I was able to book LH all the way and get a companion ticket with a fare of <$9000. But that has two overnight flights and a 10 hour layover in FRA. SA would be ideal.

I think I know why you were getting the much higher fare, and sadly it is correct. When I was looking at this last night I only saw the CSRT1 fare, which is the one I shared. There is also a C fare that is indeed $14569+ from CHI. I really didn't see it last night when I was looking. IAD and JFK have similar C fares, so no real benefit there.

Sorry for getting your hopes up.