As the title suggests, I'd be grateful for some ideas to fly from nyc to CPT in 6.5 months, We've secured reward tickets on DL and virgin flying back from jnb but the only availability on the way there through DL is business to London, long layover in london, then business to Amsterdam then economy on klm (x fare) to CPT. I don't know if we can pay to upgrade the x fare with cash.

We have Amex miles, spg miles and a delta Amex to hit some spending bonuses on.

Am I too late? Will seats be released?

Edited to add that in full disclosure I made the same routing request in the other alliance forums as we have miles and status and transfer abilities in each. Each post separately references any status with a participating alliance airline and any specific miles we have with each participant. If this is in violation of any multiple posting rules because it is three separate requests for the same trip, my apologies, and understand it it will be deleted. We usually just buy the tickets outright so aside from one foray into upgrading with miles, this is really my first time booking award tickets and I usually post in the luxury hotels section.

Many thanks!

Have you checked AF all the way? IME ST awards are quite odd, so sometimes there is better availability for AF than for DL or anybody else. In theory AF/KL are identical but in practice sometimes availability is there for codeshares either way so I'd persist in checking every option you can dream up. I have not done CPT/JNB awards beginning in NYC but I have done from GIG. It has been surprising what can be done if you're willing to continue experimenting. Remember that AF/KL US normal reservations are handled by DL, but AF/KL directly handles their award bookings. Using DL miles in principle should not work when calling AF?KL award desk US, but I did get that done once (bizarrely, for AF A380 FC, which is said to be impossible since DL has no FC so AF will not allow it to be booked, but they did at least once).

Sadly DL no longer allows Expert Flyer or other third party award inventory checking, so you'll end out calling a few times to find out how best to make your itinerary work. Someone here may have a less-calling-intensive solution than mine.

As hints, I check normal inventory on all plausible ST flights to choose my requests based on what seems to be the least heavily booked options. One consistently available option for me has been MIA-CDG-JNB. AF has a 77W on the route that is rarely heavily booked during northern hemisphere summer months. That, of course, leaves you with finding NYC-MIA and still gives you transfer time, but is more dependable than Europe summer transfers IME.

Interesting. Thanks. I am from south florida so in theory hubby and I can head down the day before, or just fly directly, whatever.

Any idea as to mileage charged for a one way if available? I'll do some calling around later today.

Eek - just logged into flying blue and checked out AF. 240,000 points for a one way? Wow.

Confirm you have enough points on any airline before asking people to find this for you. Every airline has a website that publicly displays how many miles are required for a business class one-way ticket from CPT to NYC.

However, many airlines offer an option to buy miles to cover a deficit. Normally that is expensive but can be a good deal if there are not too many miles involved. BTW, such options exist for every program I know.

Yes, in the OPs other posts it appeared she would need to buy upwards of 70,000 miles with certain airlines.