I wrote my OP a few days ago whilst waiting in the lounge in JNB for my connecting flight to CPT (by the way, 'the towels had not been delivered', so no shower but that is way OT).
In the meantime, I have had an opportunity to ponder about this 'cash conversion for Voyager miles' story, and the more I think about it, the more worried I get:
I started by working out the value of a Voyager mile to someone like myself, if I used it for a CPT/LHR redemption. The lowest fare (D) for this route is R27190 return exc. taxes and surcharges (source: ITA). Currently, this costs 85000 miles (if you can find an I seat avialable). This suggests that a Voyager mile is currently worth R0.32. Now lets assume that this is the value that Voyager will assign to a mile and work out how many miles a local trip would cost..... The lowest fare I can find (ITA again), is R1600. At R0.32 / mile, that would work out to 5000 miles for a "Voyager ticket'! No way are they going to give us that......
Conversely, if one works out the value of a mile from the Domestic redemption rate, we get to R0.09/mile (18000 mile for a R1600 ticket) and using this value we would need 300K miles for a D ticket to LHR.
If we then bring in the *A redemption table, which gives 90K miles for that award, the whole situation becomes very murky indeed.
So I am intrigued and worried about where this is going......