IAATM

South African Airlines is the only & last of the *A carriers that I haven't yet flown, but I can't find the time (or money) to travel to JNB/CPT anytime soon, preventing me from checking it off my bucket-list. Therefore, I'm considering a run from IAD-DSS over a weekend (depart IAD on Friday, land on Saturday, and return on Sunday), however, I'm not seeing a lot of award availability and prices for 3Q19 are running >$1500 USD for the round-trip.

Are there any other SAA routes that I might consider instead of IAD-DSS? Any other suggestions? I guess I can always just wait for them to go bankrupt and shut down, but that feels a little too Machiavellian.

I'm based in California, but travel to Asia and Europe quite frequently, and would love to be made aware of a SAA flight from HKG-TYO or ZRH-MAD.

dvs7310

The might have some intra-Africa but as far as farther afield international routes, I think you're onto the nearly the last remaining one and I wouldn't be too surprised if that one also went away in coming years after they upgrade the fleet to longer range planes. There is also the IAD-ACC route, but I doubt it's significantly different price wise or award availability-wise then the DSS route. SA is known to be a bit stingy on award space.
In Asia, HKG is their only remaining destination and I haven't heard of any immediate plans to push into other cities again. They codeshare onto NH and OZ for Japan and Korea.

lhrsfo

Visiting South Africa, particularly Cape Town, is one of life's greatest pleasures. Flying SA is decidedly not. So I think the OP has this completely the wrong way around.