Sorry to hear Turkish Air is not an option....sounds like another airline that once reciprocated with AA bites the dust. I miss being able to redeem AA miles on Swiss.

It seems that BA has a monopoly going with One World in Europe. I hope in the near future some European airlines drop *Alliance and Sky Team and switch to One World instead of the other way around (as it seems is happening).

How do you say that with Iberia, Finnair, and Malev, especially with Iberia, if you discount those other two?

Yes, if we're going to talk about oneworld monopolies, it might be fair to talk about AA in North America, LAN in South America (at least intra-South America), and QF in Oceania, but there are four airlines in Europe, one of the smallest of the world's continents.

Four OW airlines fly to JNB: BA via LHR, IB via MAD and CX via HKG or QF via SYD. Have you considered going via Asia?

IIRC Swiss Air was in talks with OW and they had already started to migrate IT systems and everything for membership. When they got bought out buy LH they were snapped out of the arms of OW and got into the arranged marriage with *A.

This is because TK has just joined *A...... :rolleyes:

not quite

actually Swiss announced back in June 2004 that they had decided not to proceed with OW membership

http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/about_sw..._20040603.aspx

it would be another 9 months until the negotiations with LH

http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/about_sw..._20050313.aspx


their decision not to proceed with OW membership had nothing to do with LH and apparently everything to do with BA

I only heard that they were still talking about joining OW when talks with LH started and that they had done a lot of IT work already. Even now the LH and LX IT systems are not very integrated.

Not if you have to use UA. UA is the worst airline by far by many peoples' standards, not just mine.
To quote someone else on FT:
"I would rather walk or swimm than fly UA"
Count me in in that number.

No arguments here about UA.

I get close to seven figures in Amex MR points a year which I transfer to Aeroplan. Then I redeem F awards on NH, SQ, LH, TG, LQ, etc.

I use my AA miles for OW awards to S.A. on LAN.

Excluding domestic carriers, *A is vastly superior to OW or ST.

QF is only monopoly in Australia, or monopoly in Oceania in the sense it is the sole oneworld member based in Oceanai; NZ is the monopoly that covers the islands (intra-islands, AKL-islands and LAX-islands) and it's in Star.

Isn't Air Pacific (Fiji's flag carrier) a partner of AA? oneworld has very decent Asian members - CX and JL. Too bad CX don't fly between USA and Europe like SQ does JFK-FRA or AI JFK-LHR:D

I think JL does Vancouver-Mexico City and/or NYC-Sao Paolo?

I doubt you will get seats on miles to JNB very easily - unless it is in Y. There are some decent net fares from USA -ZRH-JNB on swiss that may be worth while rather than using miles.

I love JL, but they use the old F cabins on these routes. They have also become very stingy with F rewards seats much like CX.

I've read on multiple threads here that first and biz class award seats are readily available LHR-CPT or LHR-Jo'Burg, just have to plan in advance.

I never thought about getting to South Africa going west instead of east, maybe I'll look into that. Anything to avoid connections in LHR.

We booked in October and got two First class awards on BA LHR-JNB-CPT-LHR for mid to late January using AA miles. Business class (which I originally looked for) wasn't available.

Out of interest why "anywhere but the UK"? Most of the issues with T5 are now resolved and (as a glance at the BA forum will show you) therre is a realtively high level of satisfaction with the systems.

I don't believe it's related to T5 , LHR or any UK airport.

It's related to the UK APD where it's basically up to an additional £80 to depart the UK unless in transit.