As a result of the advice on this board I applied for an Amex Premium Card and have started shopping in Tescos rather than Sainsburys!

So far so good.

I have almost reached my 10k spend on the Amex card and almost have the 100k miles needed for a CW return to SA. I know from this board that SA is a difficult destination to achieve (2 tickets in CW) and would like some advice on how I can maximise my chances of achieving this. Cape Town would be perfect!

I would like to travel in the winter of 2008 (October, November, December) so I know I need to stop using the Amex card soon to prevent the voucher triggering too early. So I figure that if I want to travel in November 2008 I should trigger the voucher in the last week of November just before my December statement. Or does the voucher get triggered prior to the statement being issued?

When should I then phone to make the booking? I looked today and I seem to be able to book as far ahead as 27th May 2008 so I assume that flights are available 50 weeks ahead? So if I want an outbound flight on (say) 14th Nov it will be made available on 31st October? And my inbound flight on 28th Nov will be made available on 14th Nov? Hence I should leave it until 14th November to book by which time any outbound flights on 14th Nov may have already been taken?

My dates are flexible but of course I will be tied into using the 241 within 12 months of issue. Hence if I trigger the voucher fairly early in order that I can book early it won't be long before my window of opportunity closes for using it for a SA booking I guess.

Are these the worst months to achieve reward bookings to SA and are there any other months where availability is better and the weather pleasant?


PS - I did a search to try to get answers to my questions but I guess it helps if you know what you're searching for! Any links to threads answering my questions appreciated.