Originally Posted by
badoc
My gut feeling is that in economy it is probably not worth the hassle but if a decent J fare was found for a bit more it might swing things.
You might get them a trip in CW for little more than the cost of an economy ticket. But you are cutting things fine for Christmas because IIRC many of the cheap ex-EU fares to ZA are 60-day AP, you will not now get a trip that includes Christmas on those fares, and the window for getting there by New Year's Eve is rapidly dwindling. In addition, for dates around then you may now struggle to get I class availability - possibly more difficult on the inbound half than the outbound half.
Don't forget to look for flights to JNB and take up one of the easy connection options to CPT. Availability may be better, fares may be significantly cheaper, and there are some nice ways of doing JNB-CPT.