jchock1

Original, all in Business, late November/early December 2014:

CLT-IAD---UA
IAD-ADD-JNB---Ethiopian
JNB-CPT (destination)---SA

Return:
CPT-JNB---SA
JNB-CAI (4-day stopover)-JFK--Egyptair
(23 hour layover) LGA-CLT--US

Egyptair stopped flying CAI-JFK on the day I was to return to NYC (December 3, 2014), so was put on the flight the next day, which caused a misconnect in NYC.

Started looking for alternatives, and since things aren't looking too harmonious in the Middle East, decided might wait to see the pyramids and Cairo.

Surprisingly, 2 award seats JNB-GRU-EWR appeared while searching United.com for award availability.

After over an hour on the phone, was able to rebook the following with no increase in miles (though the rep initially said it would be 40k extra per ticket)

(No change to outbound)
CLT-IAD---UA
IAD-ADD-JNB---Ethiopian
JNB-CPT (destination)---SA

Return:
JNB-GRU(7 day stop over)--SA
GRU-EWR--UA
EWR-CLT--UA

Received a $6/ticket Electronic Travel Certificate after the change.

Evidently it's again legal to route through South America to get to Africa from the US.