Thank you Malmostosot and worldtraveller73

We only popped onto SAA, with our first try at finding something that would not be too long a flight. We are more than willing to split the flight into two parts.

With SAA we though we would likely do a stay over in NY for one or two nights before resuming our flight (two different tickets). It makes the longest leg about 15 hrs flight time, same as to Australia, which we have done many times from LAX.

UA does not seem to allow stops, with stays anymore, with a single ticket. Fly from x to y, stay a few days and then resume y to z. Does LH allow that? IE, fly from SAN to FRA/MUC, stay a few days and then fly on to JNB?
Then reverse the process on the way back?

The Swiss Air flights, like a lot of them involve lots of connections making the total travel too long without a few days stop over. Is that allowed on them?

We are not stuck on the Star Alliance, just thought we might be able to use our mileage at least one direction for the business flight. We actually have a bit more mileage on Alaska. We are working on a cruise out of Amsterdam for next year too, so between the two trips we would like to get some "saver rates" if possible.

The YYZ to JNB again would be great, if we could stay for a few days in between. The flight to YYZ from SAN that we have for Sept is only $200 and that includes flying on to Quebec City the same day. We will miss staying in Toronto, as they are having the music festival at the time of our travel so we decided not to stay over (to hard to get a room without paying massive premiums). Again, don't know what the stops, if any are in that flight.

When I visited, and read, many of the posts with SAA it seemed to be somewhat shaky financially. Then again we flew Fiji, last year to Australia, and it was just fine. Their price was really cheap compared to the majors. We go $7500 RT, bus, total for both of us!