I'm am having the hardest time finding a Business class award ticket from SEA to CPT. I used to be able to find availability fairly easy. In the past year I haven't found anything. I can sometimes find something in one direction but not the other. And of course I want to use as few miles as possible. I'm hoping to use somewhere between 120-150K.

I have sufficient miles on most of the major US airlines. Also have in excess of 140K star points.

I want to avoid using BA because of the excessive surcharges. (could perhaps use their partner, Comair from JNB to CPT)

"I" can never find any low tier availability on Delta (I know there is a Delta thread regarding low tier awards, but apparently from SEA, they are more difficult to get)

I am flexible on dates and am not completely locked into a business award.

Are there one or two airlines I should concentrate on?

Thanks for your help

Will you be flying alone? What dates are we looking at?

I would say CO and US. Depending on how far and advance and how many people are traveling. I was able to get 4 biz awards next December. Much easier if it is only 2 though. However the direct flights are hard to get though.

Try Lufthansa. Business class availability on SEA-FRA has been pretty good over the past year or so. Then they do FRA-JNB on their own metal, codesharing with SAA for the final JNB-CPT leg, though I have no idea what award inventory is like on FRA-JNB. If you can't do an award all the way it might be worth it to redeem for SEA-FRA-JNB and just buy the last hop on Comair or SAA.

Another option would be to depart from YVR on KLM and try YVR-AMS-JNB on KL metal all the way. This would allow you to dodge the awful DL SEA-AMS service where properly priced award redemption is nonexistent.

If you have any OneWorld miles you might also try YVR-HKG-JNB on CX, going the other way around, as it were.

BA is ridiculously expensive with the dreaded YQ so I think LH and KL ex-YVR are your best bets.

I booked with Aeroplan during the 'promotion' a month or so ago for flights in march. I am flying through Chicago on united to heathrow and then SAA down to Jnb and on to cpt. Return leg is on SAA to Munich, connect in Europe and back on scandinavian airlines to copenhagen and then sk on to Chicago and united to sea for the final leg from ord to sea. The key was finding low taxes on the business award ticket.

Don't forget that you can tack on SEA-YVR on AS metal with DL miles. KL flies to CPT and not just JNB, so that's an option if CPT is the goal. DL will want 140K to South Africa in J. Use the FlyingBlue engine on airfrance.us, and I've found that for South Africa, it tends to be easiest to do US-AMS/CDG and then AMS/CDG-JNB/CPT. Find availability that works and piece it together on DL.dumb using multicity and search by schedule. Flexible date search on FlyingBlue is great, but horrific on DL.dumb, so don't even waste your time trying it. AS inventory at super saver levels on alaskaair.com will be bookable with DL miles and can be found online with search by schedule as well.

I'd use US air or Co miles to get the biz class on SAA from London to JNB, great flight

I was able to book a flight using CO miles.
It was not fun though. I learned a couple things.

The Continental website is better than United's.

The United/Continental phone system is a new low in customer service.
No exaggeration, it can take over 3 hours to get to the correct department. It has to be hurting their business.


Delta's website is almost unusable because of the errors and the help desk is clueless. (I already knew it would be very hard to find Delta low tier awards)

Emirates also flys there. It might be a stretch to fly from SEA but last I knew their award availability was decent.