mimimin

Hi,

Not sure if this is the best forum for this: When I use the ANA tool to search for seat availability on domestic routes operated by SAA, I can only find flights between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Does this mean I cannot redeem miles for routes to other cities (such as Port Elizabeth, Durban, Nelspruit, etc...) Those ticket are available for sale (and mostly operated by SA Airlink), but somewhat expensive. I believe SA Airlink is an affiliate of *A, so I should be able to search for award seat on these flights as well?

Thanks!

pduck01

You can't use miles for Airlink flights but there are plenty of domestic trips on Express I believe.

You can go to WVB or WDH which are no brainers in my humble opinion.

aisleorwindow

You can definitely use miles for SA Airlink.
For example, I currently have award ticket for MQP-JNB-LHR with the first leg on SA Airlink.
This is using UA miles, FWIW.

SCTravler

Which is the best Chase or AMEX Star Alliance transfer partner to book those on? UAL does not show availability.

dkfawme

Does anyone have insight into this? I called United and asked them to search manually, and the person wasn't able to find anything. Though I'm not convinced of her competence. I'm looking to book MQP - CPT.

MightyTravels

I have the same issue with TNR flights. Anyone has a magic success story for those flights?

jpersonette11

Hi group,

I see that a couple others have asked the same exact question, but I don't know if anyone has chimed in an answer. First time headed to Africa and looking to bridge some of the inner africa flights with miles/points when possible.

I see one guy posted a MQP-JNB-LHR route or something and says you can book with miles on SA airlink.

So it sounds possible. But I can't even pull up MQP on United.com. \\

I also see British Air has a published fare, but I had no luck on ba.com as it said no oneworld carriers cover that route. So I'm guessing that is some affliate or 3rd party partnership.

Any help would be great as we leave 8/21 and I have some planning here to get done really fast to make this thing work. Hahaha

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. Thanks - jp

aisleorwindow

You may have to call.

glocklt4

I'm also having problems with TNR flights and would really like to get this figured out for a one-way TNR-JNB that is $600pp (ouch!).

MightyTravels

FYI I have given up on this. You can use Kenya Airways with Flying Blue miles but the YQ is sky-high. Air France occasionally has mistake fares to TNR - I'll come back when that happens

glocklt4

Yeah, after asking United to check every single day and finding nothing, and calling SQ and asking for a few days - I give up on this for now. We will route through NBO with Delta Skymiles. Even with the high YQ it's still much cheaper than buying and makes SkyPesos actually worth quite a bit.

aisleorwindow

I wonder if there is some weird issue with only being able to add Airlink flights as part of a longer itinerary vs. Airlink flights on their own??

MightyTravels

As an update SA Airlink is generally available for Star Alliance partners. Look at other SA Airlink routes like JNB-WVB which are available all the time.

SA has decided to close out all availability for the JNB-TNR flight (they do have a bit of a monopoly there after all).

SA Voyager also has shows no availability for the whole year. Now if someone has a an UA agent who could call SA and unlock award seats manually...