jolly.jumper

I thought about to do that on monday but then we had a delay of 4 hrs on LHR-JNB. After immigration I just had 6 hrs left, so i decided to have a 2nd steak in the butcher shop. Better than spending 6 hrs at the airport

hawklx

JNB is actually not too bad. On my first "layover" I spent some time in the Jackson's Republic (near gate A5 IIRC), a nice place to do plane spotting and enjoy some food and drinks before the BA lounge opens.

keitherson

Gate agents have no power at LHR. Once you miss your flight and it's closed they can't do anything; you have to go to customer service. I was with the agent in one of the Galleries lounges, and he was on the phone with a supervisor.

I'm not sure what you mean by "asking nicely and beg;" I never "beg," and you should always be nice with customer service staff.

dsf

My JNB run(s) are next month. Never been before, don't drive and still haven't sorted out a decent plan for what to do when I'm there I was going to hire a driver and visit the cradle but I'm wary of doing that in case of irrops on LHR-JNB or the connections to get me there (ORY-xLHR-JNB is only 90 minutes, MAD-xLHR-JNB only 80!)

jolly.jumper

As you're connecting in T5 you can do it within 50 mins, easily. Also had that tough connections and you will have some delays during your trip, but don't worry!

superscot

If you want to keep your plans flexible, you could take the Guatrain to Park Station and catch the hop on/hop off city bus tour. You can vary the number of points you get off at (and the time you spend there) depending on your arrival and departure time. Leave time whatever you do for the apartheid museum.

When you arrive in JNB the second time, another possibility is to take the Guatrain to Praetoria, have a walk around (including going to see the Paul Kruger House museum and the parliament buildings with the massive statue of Nelson Mandela). Take a taxi to the Voortrekker Monument. Easily doable in a day and, I'd say, pretty safe.

BigVince76

I did the open top bus tour on both my days in JNB, I found it to be a pretty good way of seeing lots of stuff in a short amount of time. I did the extra tour to Soweto and the Mandela house, although this extra tour was quite expensive it was well worth it as the guide was great, full of fascinating information.

My only regret, as others have said, is that I only booked one trip!

dsf

Got back from my outbound this afternoon, LCY-ORY-LHR-JNB-LHR-MAD-LHR in 48 hours. No problems at all apart from not being able to check-in online so had to wait 'til ORY - the guy was quite amused by the itinerary The T5 connections were both a bit tight for comfort but I made them OK. It wasn't nearly as brutal as I expected - I was pleasantly surprised by the BA Y product on both B747 and (especially) A380! Still can't imagine doing it all the way to SYD tho'...

Thanks BigVince76 and superscot for the suggestion of the bus tour, that's what I did and despite being too tired and too late to explore much I got a great feel for the place. My inbound is in 2 weeks time with 3 extra hours in the ground, and now I'm familiar I know exactly what to do.

I asked about an upgrade to WT+ at JNB and they quoted me ZAR 9,999. A bit rich for me

FFlyerCDG

If you sleep well in Y and have access to lounges SYD is a breeze too

BigVince76

It was a year ago today that nikitab first posted this mistake and became my hero, thanks to this deal I have enough miles to fly BA First class on my honeymoon, I even have enough miles to take the new wife! This was by far the best deal I have ever got and I thoroughly enjoyed my trips to JNB. Thanks again nikitab, here's hoping IB celebrate the anniversary by repeating it!