We're booked on BA:

here is what I got - this is quite a deal - I booked us in premium economy using miles to upgrade to Club.

Chicago - JNB roundtrip , all in Club/Business for $2976 plus 45K miles pp. And, we were able to get assigned seats since we're AA platinums.

I'm so glad that John pointed out the wider BA window - I'm sure those Business seats would have been gone if we waited until the AA window opens up.

Wow Leslie! That is great! Did you get this because you're AA Platinum or just the assigned seats because you're Platinum? I never heard about not being able to get assigned seats on BA.

Just the assigned seats - BA has a relatively new policy about advanced seat assignments - unless you are in 1st class, paid full fare or are one of their Silver and up flyers or a One World Sapphire and up you can't get seat assignments until 24 hours before.

corrected link: BA seat assignment policy

That link didn't work? Anyway, this new policy sucks taking a chance you won't even be able to sit with your spouse.

Happy for you it all worked out. :)

sorry - try this one:

BA seat policy

I just can't get comfortable on long flights, even in Business. I don't think Delta has the most comfortable Bussiness seats. Some recline and foot rest comes up. But encountered 2 flights that the seat was broken. They gave us a bottle of wine to take home to make up for it. I have to call Delta and see if we can book 331 days before the leave date or return date. Flying is so complicated.

Just got off the phone with Delta. Still know nothing about the Cape Town addition. Told us no seats had opened up for Business award to Johannesburg yet. We want to leave on the 9th or 10th. I will just keep calling them every day. I was told they don't know when the award seats will be released. You can book 331 days out if you want to pay and not use any FF miles.

Judy - if the broken seats in Business Class was on recent flights, write to Delta, they should give you a fairly significant number of miles and/or voucher for use on a future flight - a bottle of wine is a good immediate gesture but hardly makes up for the broken seat. We had trouble with the audio/video to Europe in Business Class one time and they gave us 5,000 miles each after we wrote them a note.

How is the connection from JNB to Cape Town work? Do you have a long layover in JNB? Same airline, or partner airline so you don't need to retrieve uggage & recheck?

I noticed BA flights direct to CPT - but I guess that by doing the JNB RT you get a better fare.

Gil if you can get a flight DIRECT into Cape Town that is the BEST but they are usually harder to get. I think only BA, Luftansa and KLM fly directly into Cape Town.

The fares usually do not change much at all if you fly into Cape Town and out of Johannesburg.

This time I wanted to go to JNB as I am doing a trip to check out more camps first and of course I can only get into Cape Town.

If you fly into JNB you collect luggage and clear customs there first. Then you transfer (a three minute walk) to the domestic terminal and catch a flight to Cape Town. They leave about every hour all day long. BA has BA planes and also partners with Comair, there is also flights on South African Airways and also National. All fly from JNB to CPT.

Judy,

You can also check Delta's award availability online. I've been checking to see if and when award seats pop up. Use this link:
https://www.delta.com/awards/home.do?EventId=ENTER_APPLICATION

If that doesn't work, go to Delta.com and then click on "SkyMiles" on the upper right side of the page. Then click on "Award Travel" on the right side of the page.

For example, as of this morning, Delta had SkyChoice business award seats available for EWR - JNB on September 1, 2, 4, and 6. SkyChoice awards were available for all dates between September 1 and 7. Nothing has been loaded into the system after September 7.

Good luck with this! I know it's a pain!

Andrea

Gil - we aren't going to Cape Town which is why we're just flying to JNB.

Ngaire is right - try for the nonstop to Cape Town. Last year we flew directly from London to Cape Town - we were through customs, out of the airport and off to the Cape Grace in about 15 minutes - those who connected through JNB experienced long lines and I think a few people (Pam maybe?) missed their connection and had to wait until the next one.

We missed our connection because our flight out of Atlanta was delayed drastically (plane was delayed in Johannesburg, for whatever reason). We were several hours late getting into Johannesburg, but connecting wasn't a major problem because SAA apparently has flights just about every hour. We barely had time to get our luggage and get to the domestic terminal, to get on the next flight out. We were in such a fog at that point, that we were so thankful for the determined porter who didn't leave our side until the bags were rechecked. We had one bag misplaced, but it came in and was taken to the hotel that evening. We lost our "meet & greet" in Cape Town, but cabs were plentiful.

I just spent quite a while on the Amex travel site, to see how many Reward Points we'd spend if we booked directly that way. Of course, at the end, the Reward Points Travel System was "unavailable". We'd much rather go straight to Cape Town, but I would also prefer not to transfer at LHR.

Flying into Cape Town without going through London you should still have options on Air France, Swiss Air, Lufthansa, Iberia, KLM and SAA, some with a change of planes.
Not sure about how these work with AmEx Awards Points though??

Me either, Marcie. I'll be out of town Wed-Sat this next week, then the week after we'll both be out of town Thurs-Sun. So I'll play with it when I can, and eventually we'll figure out how we want to fly. If we end up paying for it, we can still use the points/miles somewhere else.

Many of these flights have not released seats yet. SAA and BA has. They work with Star Alliance, but you have to have 380K per seat available yo upgrade, as they have no class to class upgrades. BA and SAA also do not work with AMEX points. You have to move your points to another airline. The luckiest ones are those who have BA miles. Leslie and Brad got a great deal.

Andi, it depends on which AmEx card you're talking about. Starwood AmEx DOES work with BA on a 1:1 ratio converting points to f.f. miles.

Thanks, Marcie. Maybe I have to get one now.

I tried to use Leslie's idea today - we could buy Premium Economy on BA for $2,434 and upgrade to Business for 45K miles apiece, but the only return dates from JNB were either 9/24 or 9/30. If we only upgraded on the way to CPT the fare would have gone up to $3709 because the lower fare isn't available in Premium Economy on the return on 9/26. I'll keep checking but I think we'll be flying Virgin Atlantic when those fares open up. Seems to be the best deal around right now.

Try back again Andrea. They may be holding seats and someone may not go through with the booking and the right date may open up.

You can check availability on the BA site - log in with your executive club member - go to the "spending BA miles" link and then click on the "Upgrade a new booking using BA Miles" and plug in your cities and dates and the class you want to upgrade from, ie premium economy. If your exact dates aren't available they give you a calendar of dates that are.

I found that you have to check it by segment - ie JNB-LHR and that if you put the whole thing in. like DFW-JNB, then it gives you an error message. There is a also the option to book a stopover to Cape Town - it is possible you may find some space that way.

I couldn't get it to book online, but when you can see the availability it saves you from wasting time always calling until you see the space.

The taxes are outrageous though - the fare from Chicago-JNB roundtrip is $2500 - the taxes are almsot 20% on top of that, around $476.

The taxes via London are crazy since they add on a "luxury tax" for Biz and 1st class tickets even if you are just upgrading to a premium cabin or redeeming miles for a "free" ticket. The taxes on a "free" business class ticket can be more than the economy fare during the off-season!! They claim that it helps pay for "Fast Track" but I've found that on some occasions the "Fast Track" is no quicker than the standard line.

Is that true if you are only in transit in LHR?

CDG has similar tax although not as steep as LHR. Also, I think it only applies to Business and First Class departures from CDG; not arrivals.

Well, we are half booked. At least we will get there. Shuffling around and non-stop thinking! John had enough miles for a Business ticket. I still needed 50,000. He gave me some of his extra miles and I bought 30,000 to get my 120,000. Now, just waiting 24 to 48 hrs. for them to post. This is still alot cheaper than booking M class coach and getting an upgrade. About $2,000 cheaper. We were allowed to book from Vegas to Johannesburg but not the return until 11/02. They said if we couldn't get back they would refund the miles. What we have to go through to get those FF miles used!!! I have been calling every day until the seats were "released". It is very stressful and alot of time to do this. I hope this safari will be as wonderful as I am expecting. Andi told me it is like going to Fantasy Island! I just hope Delta will get us back o.k. I will be calling ASAP on the 2nd of November.

Judy, did you book a one-way (and will a return cost you another 120k), or has Delta decided to hold the outgoing seats until you can book the incoming, once again? I'm going to be out of town from tomorrow until Sunday, and right now I'm not seeing Sept 12 loaded yet.

I'm going to pick everybody's brains as this rocks on; just like last time, we haven't decided exactly what we want to do.

Not an expert on Delta, but I think you book the one way for the 120,000 miles and then you call back when the return is available and add the return flights and it is no more miles. That is how it worked when we did the Dubai flights for Camel.

Wow, 120k is cheap. I think Continental/KLM was 380K last time around for BusinessFirst. Somehow, I'm collected the wrong airlines.

Delta told me it would be round trip. Let's hope so or it will be a no go. They are holding this reservation for 48 hrs. Hopefully long enough for our miles to transfer into my account. They are aware it is round trip. More later----have to get ready for work. judy

spent all morning spending miles. Last nt it 2800000, this morning it was 120000. Jumped on those so we know we are at least going. Hopefully we can get back. These miles thing are very fluid. Each time I put in to see what awards are it changes.

We booked JFK-CPT last night on NWA/KLM. It was $2015 + 30,000 pts pp for an upgrade to biz class. Flight leaves NY at 5:45 PM and arrives in Amsterdam at 7:15 AM. The flight to CPT leaves at 10:05 AM and arrives in CPT at 9:45 that night. This was 1/2 of what we were finding anywhere else.

Arlene, that sounds like a real steal! Did you use NWA f.f. miles or KLM f.f. miles for the upgrade?

Something like this would work for us on SAMBA too (but we'd overnight a night or 2 in Amsterdam). I'm glad that the ROAR people and the SAMBA people aren't all flying and competing for seats at the same time!

That's a good fare Arlene and a terrific schedule - I wish BA had an AM flight - it wasn't too bad last year spending the day at Heathrow - we had massages at the Moulton Brown Spa at the BA lounge (now operated by another spa company), showers, snoozed a bit and ate, but given a choice I would much rather just keep going.

We used NWA ff miles. The whole thing was booked through NWA.

BTW: if you are a member of their ff club and don't have quite enough miles, you can "buy" them and it's still cheaper. You can buy up to 30,000 miles in a calendar year pp and the cost is something like $840.

The nice thing about using te NWA miles was that I did not even realize I had NWA miles! I used to fly to Detroit & Minneapolis alot on biz, but have not made that trip in at least 5 years. I guess at that time NW miles had no expiration date. So when arlene found that itinerary, I went to my account online (which I had to redo because so much info was out of date), and found almost 60,000 miles.
It's like Found Money!

Anyone have experience with KLM Biz class? We're on an Airbus A330 to AMS, and then a 777 to CPT.


RETURN FLIGHT:

Unfortunately, not going as well so far.
Had enough Amex points to book the return on SAA. It's a good itinerary - 8 hrs to Dakar, then 8 hrs to JFK. But SAA has informed me that they will no longer be taking Amex points for travel effective 1/1/08.
They expect to know by sometime in November If they will be taking Amex points again. By then it will likely be too late to get award seats.

So now looking elsewhere.

Oh no, Gil! We were sort of counting on using our Amex points on SAA. That was our backup plan if we couldn't use the BA companion certificate. Grrr! Back to the drawing board...again.

Thanks for letting us know about this!

Andrea

Exactly, and its booked kind of as an "open return" or some dummy booking that they create - and then if you can't get the return you want they supposedly will cancel and redeposit the miles at no cost - I haven't done this though.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Arlene:
We booked JFK-CPT last night on NWA/KLM. It was $2015 + 30,000 pts pp for an upgrade to biz class. Flight leaves NY at 5:45 PM and arrives in Amsterdam at 7:15 AM. The flight to CPT leaves at 10:05 AM and arrives in CPT at 9:45 that night. This was 1/2 of what we were finding anywhere else. [/

One way or RT????

One Way. RT biz fares are running between $7-8,000 pp.

It's a great deal, Arlene, and kudos to you for finding it.

One other consideration if you are booking one-way flights. The low-cost biz airlines (MaxJet, EOS, Silverjet, L'Avion) fly from London or Paris back to NY and don't upcharge for one-way fares. Perhaps there's a good fare from Air France, Virgin or BA to connect with those airlines.

We flew Frankfurt round trip on Continental and then SAA round trip Frankfurt-Capetown for Roar 1. My recollection is the Capetown-Frankfurt leg was during the day. That would have been OK in premium economy vs. coach. It's that overnight down to Capetown where the biz class was so welcome. I slept a long time & got the trip off to a great start.

Cheers, Anne