natekap

First off, I'm still a newbie so please go easy on me

I'm trying to go from NYC to Cape Town for a month at the very end of Dec 15 or very beginning of Jan 16 and then end up in Bogota at the beginning of February. Because these are all such long flights, was hoping to do this in J on an award ticket with United miles.

I've been searching for this for a few months and the options I'm seeing that are still low level biz awards seem pretty crappy now. Mostly South African Airways or Egyptair. Both of whom seem to have pretty crappy biz class options.

I was seeing a nice option this summer from CPT-MAD-BOG, on a nice new Avianca 787 on the MAD-BOG leg, on Jan 29th. But I haven't seen that flight available in any United.com inventory for over a month now, for any Jan - June 2016 dates! Anyone have any idea what happened there?

Does anyone have any creative suggestions for this itinerary that they see available that I'm missing? Or any input on these SA flights from NYC-JNB-CPT and CPT-JNB-GRU-BOG?

Should I just book something to lock it down and then try to change the routing as last minute seats open up? Or should I start looking into Oneworld for this trip?

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help

UAPremExecflyer

Really?
Suggest you need to do a better job searching.
SAA business class gets very good reviews: far from "crappy".
One of myriad reviews http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-business.html
MS not quite as good http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...7-300er-3.html
Also, you won't find all the options online. You will need to call UA.

JVPhoto

JFK-CPT in SA J was a great flight. Would happily take it again vs flying through Europe (like I did on the way back).
I didn't know there was going to be a CPT-MAD flight. Just launching?

Ha just noticed my TR was linked above.

1kBill

I took SA LHR-JNB a year ago, and would take their business class in a heartbeat any time. They are far better than UA.