Originally Posted by Ajohn

Yep, you've definitely found one of the limitations of the oneworld network here. The African continent is an incredibly difficult one to travel around (and even to) on oneworld carriers. Because there are only a handful of exceptions to the no-travel-via-third-regions rule, the only way to take advantage of that 75k SWP-Africa award is to take the QF SYD-JNB flight and then connect from there. Because no oneworld carrier flies JNB-CMN, you're out of luck and would have to redeem two awards.

To be honest, that seems pretty fair with North African destinations. After all, that's a huge distance to cover. What would be really galling would be if you had to use 150k miles -- the two awards combined -- to fly 5000 miles from PER-DAR in economy. (Which, by the way, I have never done and never will.)

I'm pretty sure the easiest/cheapest way to do what you want to do is to redeem 90k for the BNE-MAD flights and then buy a sub-$200 ticket to jump the Strait.

P.S. There's a funny typo on the All-Partner AAdvantage Award chart that seems to indicate that SWP-Africa in coach must travel "transpacific". That would certainly be interesting, but alas, it's wrong.

P.P.S. Iberia actually does fly its own metal to RAK on a 3x weekly schedule (Su,Tu,Sa) from MAD, though again, this is not very helpful unless you want to pay 60k to redeem on it.