Originally Posted by milesforhire

Yeah that's what I ended up having to do. First they said it had to be "exact original flights" (which presented a problem because I had IAD-JNB using SAA, which doesn't exist anymore), but after talking to a supervisor, they came back and said it had to match the current route. The agent was ready to tell me to pound sand because of the SAA flight until she got clarification about the rule from the supervisor.

My call eventually dropped with the first agent (or they hung up because it was too complicated lol) but the next day, I got the same spiel from a different agent. When she put in a superior routing (fewer connections) the computer gave errors but when we tracked down the route matching my current ticket, she was able to proceed. YMMV. Best of luck!