Often1, thank you so much for spending the time to help educate me on this topic.

To give you some more details, I have contacted various South African Airways (SAA) customer service departments, and they ALL reply with the exact same auto-reply:

"Thank you for contacting South African Airways Customer Service.

The protection of our employees from contracting the COVID 19 virus is at the core of our priorities. We are therefore compelled to adopt a new normal in ensuring that we are still of service to you. SAA has had to significantly downscale its operations - we are currently operating a one customer touchpoint operation via an email channel. The reduction in our operation has posed some limitations to the known recovery processes.

We would like to bring to your attention that during Level 3 of lockdown, SAA will not be processing any payment of refunds however we have put together a fantastic Flexi ticket usage policy which can be found on http://www.flysaa.com.

Flight reservation functionality is restored for Domestic SAA/Mango Codeshare flights only on https://www.flysaa.com/plan-book or via the [email protected] email channel.

As you can see SAA is very clear: "We would like to bring to your attention that during Level 3 of lockdown, SAA will not be processing any payment of refunds however we have put together a fantastic Flexi ticket usage policy which can be found on http://www.flysaa.com." That is complete BS!

Another challenge I have is that I used Chase Ultimate Rewards points from my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card to make the SAA reservation.

So after going back and forth with Chase about these SAA cancelled flights, Chase Travel Services sent me the following e-mail: "We reviewed your request and advocated on your behalf with the South African Airways. Although your booking was not refundable, we were able to secure a future travel credit that you can use to rebook your travel at a later date. This way you do not lose the value of the fare you have already paid." Again, complete BS, especially since SAA cancelled the flights.

Thank you for pointing out rule 11.2 from SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS GENERAL CONDITIONS OF CARRIAGE dated May 2018: https://www.flysaa.com/documents/518...c-8b2a9a0de9b4
INVOLUNTARY REFUNDS
11.2.1. If we cancel a flight, fail to operate a flight reasonably according to
schedule, fail to stop at your destination or stopover, or cause you to
miss a connecting flight on which you hold a reservation, the amount of
the refund shall be:
11.2.1.a. if no portion of the ticket has been used, an amount equal to
the fare paid;
11.2.1.b. if a portion of the ticket has been used, the refund will be not
less than the difference between the fare paid and the
applicable fare for travel between the points for which the
ticket has been used.
11.2.2. Upon acceptance of a refund by the passenger on the purchase of a
ticket under these circumstances, we shall be released from any further

I agree, I should be eligible for a refund, or in my case a re-deposit of my Chase UR points back into my account.

Any advice on how I should proceed?

Thank you again for your help and time, I really do appreciate it.