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A number of airlines (including British Airways, KLM/Air France and Qatar Airways) are running nice Business Class fares from Madrid to Johannesburg at the moment – starting at just £1363 return.
The British Airways fares are valid for bookings made by 6th February 2020, for travel through the end of November.
Direct flights from London with BA or Virgin Atlantic are more like £2,500 per person, so positioning to Madrid could save you some serious cash:
If you are particularly keen to fly from London though (but don’t mind a connection in Nairobi), I did spot some excellent Kenya Airways Business Class fares too:
Personally, I’d rather start in Madrid and fly with Qatar Airways or BA for the same sort of money, but the option is there!
On a related note, what would be the best way to get to South Africa on points? Particularly from the North.
Looking to transfer my AMEX points out and Krisflyer Star alliance awards look interesting. Anyone know how easy it is to redeem on partners and availability on airlines like Lufthansa/South African?
Booked a trip to the Maldives with help from your article on the Marriott to AAdvantage bonus so thanks!
I know its not an Amex partner (unless you go via Marriott), but ANA offers return awards to South Africa in Business Class for just 68k return.
One of the most ridiculous bargains in miles and points.
I’ve found that the best award space is offered by Ethiopian.
To be fair, that’s so good that it might well be worth doing Amex via Marriott.
Asia Miles has consistently good pricing (particularly if you can put together a crazy one-way stopover redemption for the return leg, and/or tag the outbound onto a previous redemption).
If you have AA Miles, that’s also a solid option (though ANA is much better if you’re going via Marriott).
As part of a bigger RTW style trip, Singapore KrisFlyer offers great value between South Africa and Asia. Alaska Miles on Cathay between south africa and USA with a stopover in HK is also unbelievable value (although I’m not personally in a rush to visit HK right now).
If you don’t mind Economy, I seem to recall that Virgin off peak can be decent value (25k maybe?).
Am I right in thinking KrisFlyer is 90k return in Biz from Europe to South Africa on Star Alliance partners? I’m not sure what award space and surcharges are like flying with South African/Ethiopian/Turkish, but that would definitely be worth investigating.
Turkish and Ethiopian both fly from Manchester, although you might prefer starting outside the Uk in order to avoid APD anyway.
Also, I’m not sure how Turkish would price actually as its technically in a the ME/NA region. Ethiopian should be fine though.
Unfortunately I think there was a devaluation and now requires 103k. Will look at other European options to SA too so long is it worthwhile…sometimes the hassle of the extra flight can outweigh the gain in points/pounds!
That is excellent value using ANA. Would that be bookable using Virgin miles? Can Ethopian be booked using Krisflyer?
You would have to use ANA miles to get that price. You cannot convert Virgin or Singapore miles into ANA miles.
You can generally book all Star Alliance airlines (including Ethiopian) from all of the different Star Alliance frequent flyer programmes such as Krisflyer.