Originally Posted by
cheltzel
I have found that award flights to what may be considered tourist destinations in or around South Africa on either BA/Comair or on SA (Express or Airlink) very hard to find. I have found that BA/Comair award availability between JNB, CPT, WDH, PLZ, DUR, and HRE to be readily available.
The only carrier I have seen with consistent availability to "tourist" destinations is ET. And that is a limited number of destinations (VFA, JRO, ZNZ, etc).
Right, I have not yet flown them (and, frankly, I have a little hesitation) but I constantly see award availability on the UA site for Ethiopian. It doesn't help too much in southern Africa, though. I did notice you could get to Zanzibar from JNB this way if you wanted to, however.
The BA/Comair award availability within South Africa seems pretty good, but also pretty worthless. On most of their routes, there's Kulula and Mango which often have published rates at around US$60 if you plan a little ahead. For some reason (BA fees?) the "tax" on the Avios intra-South African award tickets is something like $44. You can probably understand why I just fly the low fare airlines in that case (which offer non-objectionable service).
While UA charges much lower "taxes" for intra-South Africa flights, I've seen them charge significantly more tax for other destinations, like JNB-WDH. I can't make any sense of it. And UA seems to offer award seats to only some SA "airlink" destinations, seemingly randomly.
I've also noticed that SA will make tons of award seats available on specific flights, like one flight every week or so, and offer no award availability on all the other flights. And the flights they choose seem almost random (like no seats on a Wednesday, but lots of seats on a Sunday). They do seem to sometimes add more award availability closer to departure. That helps me as a UA 1K, as I can make schedule changes without penalty.
Overall, though, it's a confusing and not particularly easy part of the world to use your miles.