Apologies if this question does not merit its own thread or belongs somewhere else - I read the wiki and didn't see a dedicated thread for these types of questions.

My fiancee and I are attempting to book our return flight home for our honeymoon to South Africa and Botswana next September. We have an outbound flight from NYC to JNB flying DeltaOne/Air France (layover in Paris) leaving August 28, 2017 that we redeemed for 95k Delta miles per ticket.

Upon booking our outbound flight, we encountered the dreaded "phantom award availability" error while attempting to book our return flight home through United on Swiss Air (one with a layover in Zurich and on a separate occasion from JNB to Zurich to Vienna to NYC). Of course, UA's customer service has been totally unhelpful and is giving us the standard company line that award travel is subject to ever changing availability etc.

As a result, we're stuck with 160,000 UA miles which we were planning on using for 2x Business Saver flights on Swiss Air from JNB (or CPT) to NYC. We're really not comfortable flying through Istanbul (on Turkish), Cairo (on EgyptAir) or ADD (on Ethiopian Air) (each of which has Business Saver availability) and would much prefer to fly through a European city, even if it means an extra stop somewhere. Our return flight date is somewhat flexible -- sometime between September 12th and the 14th (with the 12th or 13th being best).

I'm not that optimistic that there's anything else available right now, but I'm still a newbie so I'm wondering if the community has any ideas on how to get us home for our honeymoon.

Many thanks in advance - any ideas are greatly appreciated.