Award seats and upgrades are a lottery. If you do not have status you can/will be down list. The process for getting awards/upgrades can be hard with some ffp's

Given SAA financial issues, I would be wary of buying a flight on them-----> SAA's financial woes

For a cash ticket try Turkish Airlines (Star Alliance)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_S...tional_Airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_...tional_Airport
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=AMM-DOH-DUR&MS=wls&DU=mi