eugegall

Hi All,

We are planning a trip this October from London to Johannesburg and then from Cape Town back to London and we're really struggling to make it work.

We're both BA Bronze but will be Silver before we fly out.

We'd like Club World if possible. The best price we've seen so far is EX-AMS for about £1900.

Do EX-AMS prices drop when BA put a sale on? Surely one is due VERY soon?

Thank you all in advance. Just trying to get my head around this site. It's great so far.

DYKWIA

£1900 seems a good price to me. What sort of price are you looking for?

mikeyfly

A while ago Porto to JNB was around £1200

These things come and go, if you see something and it’s the right price point, book it and never look back

eugegall

I guess we would pull the trigger at £1500 give or take.

Until the other night we were committed to fly premium for £1000/£1200 but for the length of the flight we would rather fly club, obviously haha.

The rest of the holiday is costing a fortune but the main question really is when will BA sale start. Gotta be soon.

windowontheAside

BA sales have been a bit thin on the ground of late, and even then I wouldn't be confident that SA would be included. Seems like plenty of demand and limited capacity means the flights are always busy.

I guess it's just a question of wait as long as you can and see what happens.

mikeyfly

Don’t rely on sales, they are rarely anything special; £50 off economic my, maybe a few more off Club.

Its the secret dynamic pricing you need to follow. Other airlines doing deals and BA quietly matching. These won’t be publicised.

Follow the main premium fare thread and keep checking various start points to JNB/CPT combinations.

£1500 is an unusual price to cover CPT with sfive months to go wouldn’t hold out for this

oxtailsoup

We paid £1500 for AMS to JNB just a few weeks ago and managed to upgrade to First too. We get the AMS to LHR sector out of the way the evening before which helps our situation.

Have you tried pricing it up as a flight plus car? That reduced the price for us a bit and allowed us to pay a deposit.

might also be worth using ITA Tools to search for the lowest fares from EU for the dates you need. After finding the best price option... then add car hire on BA to lower it some more.

Flame3601

What dates in October, as early October is school holidays. 1900 is about as good as it is going to get i rate, maybe try looking flying direct into Durban then connecting onto either JNB or CPT on a low-cost carrier such as Flysafair,Mango, Kulula, SAA and then obviously BA are your options.

eugegall

Thanks for the solid advice.

I wish I was confident in doing the regular checks.

Would you use on a daily basis? Skyscanner or Google Flights?

I appreciate we have left it until the last minute however we were originally planning on going in Jan/Feb next year.

eugegall

Thanks for this. This is exactly what we are looking for.

I guess you are going to ditch the final leg back to Amsterdam?

Which site did you book this on?

Thanks again.

eugegall

Just priced up on BA directly which converts at around £1550 give or take.

Am I on the right track?

dodgeflyer

Without much hassle I found £1550 return to JNB from AMS, 1850 if flying into CPT. I’d be tempted to buy a JNB return and add an avios booking to CPT.

Edit: see OP found. I’d book that.

oxtailsoup

We booked it on BA.com. We used ITA matrix to find the flights first and then booked it on BA.com and played around a bit before discovering that booking it as a flight+car was slightly cheaper again and allowed us to book with just a deposit.

i would suggest sharing the dates you are looking for and some kind sole will help you. I’m off to bed but will look tomorrow if no one else has already done so.

For help on ITA Matrix... have a look at the TP Run thread. You may get to bed late though!

simon stingray

There is availability on BA in Oct for £1550 ex AMS to JNB return.

I suspect the ex CPT return leg is what is pushing the price up-would it not be better (cheaper) to book AMS-JNB return and buy a 1 way CPT-JNB on Comair or Kulula to position back to JNB for your return flight?

Globaliser

As others have said, JNB should be readily available at that time of the year for about £1,550.

Your difficulty with coming back from CPT is that the corresponding fare is not valid for travel on a trip that starts in October. That's why you're getting a much higher price. The valid dates for the lower fare look like they are for trips starting 16 April - 15 September. But if those dates don't work for you, then you may have to look at a different plan. (If you were to start your trip on 15 September, you might get AMS-LHR-JNB//CPT-LHR-AMS at that £1,550 price level.)

One plan is to buy a round-trip ticket to JNB, and do all of the domestic travel under your own steam. That includes flying from CPT to JNB at the end of the trip to connect to the JNB-LHR flight, but you would need to heed all of the risks and complications that come with two tickets if you simply buy a separate CPT-JNB ticket.

If you don't want to incur the risks and complications, it looks like it would be possible to buy a through ticket that basically adds an additional CPT-JNB flight and fare (on BA's local franchisee) to the JNB-LHR-AMS. This should come to a little under £1,800, although I suspect you may have to phone BA to book this.

What might happen if there is an ex-AMS sale? (Note, of course, that even if there is an ex-UK sale, that might not lead to an ex-AMS sale.) Recent history suggests that the fare levels do not drop very much, but there is tinkering with fare rules - for example, the AP restriction on the sale fare may be only 7d instead of 60d. And then it's possible that a sale fare for CPT might not have the travel date restrictions, with the consequence that you might get the £1,550 fare level for AMS-LHR-JNB//CPT-LHR-AMS. But personally, I would regard £1,500 or so as a price floor below which the total cost of travel is unlikely to drop. In any case, £1,550 is a bargain.