Globaliser

At current flight-only CW fares ex-AMS, that's pretty much the lowest price. The only further possible tweaks you could make to that would be using different airports to reduce the TFC slightly, but if flying LCY-AMS for the last sector is your best option, then the saving in going for LGW-AMS is likely to be outweighed by the extra hassle of picking a less convenient routing.

eugegall

Thanks all for your help.

I ended up calling and emailing a really helpful person at BA who booked the flights for me over the phone.

£1564 each return is a great price so thank you all for your help and advice.

eugegall

Hey,

Can you tell me a little about your upgrade to first. I would love to do this for at least one of the legs.

Please note that we have now booked club return EX-AMS.

Cheers

antipest

There are 2 reward seats in First on the 22nd (if this is the date booked for your return). However it is on the BA054. To secure these seats you just phone up and ask them to upgrade you using Avios and as long as you have enough points the seats are yours.

eugegall

Thanks for this.

Do you know how many Avios this is? Also is it worth switching from A380 to 747?

Pascoe

Those last few options seem good prices - I'd book those.

Remember also that the reward flights themselves for LHR / CPT direct often get snapped up at T-364 (ie the day after they go on sale) in my understanding.

Certainly when we went in November we were really struggling, and that's with every option available to us - hundreds of thousands of Avois to use up, a BA Amex 241 voucher and status related options.

The one thing you simply can't get around at the end of the day is that J may actually be full on that route. And if not, so near to being full that there's no real need or incentive on BA's part to slash the fares.

Fwiw we did JNB >> PLZ and then CPT >> JNB with Comair and it was perfectly fine. So if you really want J and CPT ends up being the sticking point, go with a nice A380 to JNB I say.

eugegall

Thanks for this.

We've booked the JNB return on the A380 anyway as as the previous posted said, there is F reward availability but on the 747 later flight. I think we'll just stay in club and save our air miles. We don't have that many.

Really nice to hear Comair is fine. Was a little concerned but I'll get that booked as soon as I know our itinerary.

Thanks again.

Pascoe

We went Comair in business and both the flight and the SLOW lounge were great. The toilets in CPT were really quite interesting as I've never sat on the toilet in full view of the apron before (I think there was some modesty glass in place but still I was basically looking out on aircraft taxiing past.

eugegall

Haha that sounds incredible.

I mean I get stage fright at the best of times so this sounds interesting.

I'm assuming you earn tier points and miles on that?

umgowah

JNB to CPT was not an SA Express route, so it shouldn't impact the OP at all.

There is now a set of blinds in the loo with a view.

windowontheAside

Comair is great. The service in both Y and J is better than BA, and the SLOW lounge is one of my favourites.

We did something similar to the OP only last month and while I planned to use Avios for the CPT-JNB leg (there are many flights a day, and most had availability), I was shocked when I checked cash fares. I think we paid about £80 each for Y but could have got it for about £50 if we'd gone a couple of hours earlier. That was Y of course, for which we enjoyed lounge access (courtesy of GC), plenty of legroom, a hot meal and a couple of rounds of drinks from CC who were professional, cheerful and seemed very happy to be doing their job. Reminded me of the BA of yesteryear really.

Pascoe

Yes full BA TPs and hat I assume is also full Avios although as I have more than I can use at present I admit I don't always check these. But the TPs were standard full BA scheme for sure. 40 each way.

Globaliser

Comair (ie BA-coded flights, not the MN-coded kulula-branded flights) is sometimes said here to be what BA short-haul ought to be, but isn't.

Otherwise, for almost all purposes (including earning Avios and TPs) you can treat BA-coded Comair flights as if they were BA mainline flights. The differences are pretty small - perhaps the most noticeable to a passenger are the Noah's Ark selection of configurations that sometimes doesn't get firmed up until the morning of the flight, so you may have little idea where you'll actually be sitting; and the more restrictive cabin baggage limit.

estrangeiro8

@eugegall: great to know you've managed to book the BA flights! An alternative to think about when you go to SA again is Qatar. I flew to South Africa in March with them for a similar price (c.£1200). Excellent product. Only slight quirk was that it was ex-Sofia, but managed to spend an interesting weekend in the city before heading over to SA.

oxtailsoup