Originally Posted by
joe.cheung.ny
Hey thijsseh. It's paid, the flights in the afternoon are operated by Mango though they do show up on SAA as operated by them. Part of the issue is that as they are business, Mango doesn't have business class so they claimed that they can only book me on the SAA operated flights which was either 7:00AM or after 7:00PM. The two flights in the afternoon are operated by Mango. This is a classic case of the representative trying to do the bare minimum with no regards to customer service. Plus the fact that on the second call I placed, I was told that rebooking was require, like really, they can't just switch me to an afternoon Mango flight. Anyways, I emailed customer service and got an automated reply that they would get back within 10 business days. At this point, my backup plan would just to purchase the Mango flight on one tickets and just skip the early morning flight. I'm not holding my breath for SAA to contact me back. Congrats SAA, you just lost another customer. Tax payers can only support you for so long so Happy New Year!
If you 'skip' the early morning flight (i.e. you are a 'no show'), they will cancel any subsequent flights so that does not appear a clever thing to do!
I would not hold my breath expecting SAA to get back to you within 10 business days (or ever). I unfortunately don't have good experiences on that front.
If you give us the date of the flight (as also per evanb's suggestion), we can try to help you with a strategy to solve your problem. No guarantees given, but with the help of expert flyer we can see what is available. Most days (but apparently not on a Tuesday), there is an SAA flight with Business Class around 5pm.