I just successfully ticketed two JNB-HKG-LAX tickets. HKG-LAX are different flights, albeit on the same day. JNB-HKG is in biz, all that is offered. HKG-LAX is in F. It took me a couple hours of prep before calling AS. The AS agent said it was rare to be able to accomplish 2 F bookings so easily. I thought it might be worth going thru how I did this.
A number of people in this thread suggested using awardnexus. It is a paid service, where you buy a certain number of searches. I found it invaluable for this. I knew from reading the thread that I was unlikely to find 2 F seats for an individual flight. Thus, my first step was to search for 1 seat for the window of time I had available. I searched over 28 days and found an F seat on at least one of the 3 HKG-LAX flights on 24 days. I reran the search looking for 2 seats. Nope, not a single flight had 2 seats. I then searched the same window for 2 seats from JNB-HKG in biz. I only found 4 days that had 2 seats available. I wanted a day in Hong Kong so I took one of those four days to see what onward flights to LAX were available with the layover that I wanted. I found two separate flights with 1 seat each. I then called AS and fed the dates and flights that I wanted. AS requires that the ticket be issued during the course of the call; there is no courtesy hold.
I now have awardnexus set to search on a daily basis for the two flights where we are ticketed from HKG-LAX. Hopefully over the next several months a second seat will become available and we can fly together. (Neither of these flights had a business class award seat available so that was not an option.) I very much want us to fly together but we will end our trip separately if need be.
Cost: 70K points per ticket plus roughly $100 that includes a $12.50 nonrefundable partner ticket fee