Originally Posted by worldcupfan

Mrs. Worldcupfan and I will be celebrating our honeymoon in about 6 weeks with our first trip to Africa and we're excited about our planned safaris in Botswana and beach/scuba plans in Mauritius and Seychelles.

Unfortunatley, SAA canceled their flight and will not allow us to access their other flights that have acceptable connections. I'm hoping the pros at FT can help identify optoins or possibly compensation that shoudl be expected.

Quick background:
- Purchased 2 business class tickets MUC-JNB (stopover)-MRU; MRU-JNB-MUC (with final leg being an evening flight). Currency used to "purchase" business class ticket was UA miles
- On return, originally scheduled to arrive into MUC Sunday morning so no problem making connections to USA for Sunday night return and back to work Monday (we are buying a separate ticket Chicago-Europe RT)
- SAA canceled their evening flight JNB-MUC and moved to morning flights ~ every other day. Now we have 2 issues:
(1) we now miss all connections to the US and other western Europe airports on Sunday and our only option for getting back to Chicago at a decent time Monday is to take an overnight train MUC to Frankfurt and take the ~8:00 am flight to Chicago.
(2) Have to overnight in JNB
- Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but we're already going to be gone for 3 weeks and need to be back at work on Monday
- I'm a United 1k and will cross 1 million BIS miles this year
- SAA has a connection to London evening that we were supposed to fly to Munich, but they will not open seats for us since there isn't award availability
- UA says there isn't anything they can do (one UA agent suggested SAA is obligated to get us to our destination within a reasonable time since they confirmed the space then cancelled the flight, but SAA office UA had to contact was closed. The agent I contacted today was less supportive...)
- Only

Some questions:
(A) Does SAA have any obligation to accomodate us since they cancelled our flight and have another flight (to London) that would work well for us and is very close to our original schedule?

I don't think SA has any obligation to accommodate you to put you to London that would work well for you and is very close to your original schedule. SA has, however, an obligation to get you to MUC in reasonable time frame. This may not mean you can catch your MUC-USA flight, though.

(B) Is SAA obligated to pay for a hotel room since they cancelled the flight & caused the overnight (I seem to remember that flights to/from Europe have some legal T&Cs that have this requirement for carriers that cancel flights)

I believe if SA notice you the cancellation in certain days before the departure date, then they are not required to pay compensation, but I may be mistaken here.

(C) Is there anything that UA can or should do?

UA can refund the miles to your account, but I guess that's about it.

Thanks!