I was able to book 2 award seats on EK JFK-DXB-JNB in J for 150,000 each, two years ago. It was super easy. I was even able to change the dates of my return since my wife wanted to see Dubai. We were on the inaugural new J seat on the 777-300ER. Great flights. We had the A345 on the return to JFK, which was terrible.

But I wasn't over Xmas which is always hard to South Africa even if you were flying on revenue tickets.