Originally Posted by
Plane Crazy
I recently booked two DGLOB34 and a AONE5 departing JNB through the JNB AA office which was priced at ex-South Africa prices despite using an overseas credit card. I just did the usual of contacting the AA RTW Desk in DFW (+18002473247) to make a reservation then called AA in South Africa (+27214406440) who priced and ticketed the reservation in a matter of days. Note that they will charge you in USD despite the quote being based on SA rand prices.
I too had emailed mindpearl who I have used in the past and was told they no longer ticket reservations.
Many thanks - if that's still viable, it sounds like the way to go. Did you happen to compare their exchange rate with xe.com (or your favorite benchmark)? I'd guess it's probably a quirky, arcane number that's close enough.
Unimportant, I'm curious about the nature of AA's presence in JNB. Company staff or another agent?
I presume that an advantage of dealing "directly" with AA is that pricing will reflect AA's philosophy about surcharges and should let me book the AA codeshare out of JNB. Presumably they'd add in their YR instead of BA's higher YQ.
Thanks again the the very useful good news.
John