Auckland / Melbourne to Johannesburg - best options

[nickykim]

My older sister has finally decided she wants to fly to South Africa to meet her younger half brothers and sisters. She's asked me to come along too. I've done some initial research and it look like the routes are either via Perth or via SE Asia. I have about 135,000 points with Velocity, about 35,000 with SQ and an orphan 7,000 odd sitting with AA. Any suggestions about the best route options with either cash or (me) paying with points for both a Melbourne departure and an Auckland departure?

Thanks

 

[Mattg]

You can definitely use the VA/SQ miles to fly on South African Airways from PER to JNB. The cost would be 90,000 Velocity points return in Economy or 190,000 return in Business (which is out of your reach, it seems). Slightly more flying all the way from Melbourne, and a bit more again coming from Auckland.

By my calculations, AKL-PER-JNB is 130,000 Velocity miles return in economy, flying Air NZ to PER direct and SA to JNB. Perhaps redeem your Velocity miles for that and then pay cash to fly MEL-PER-JNB?

Alternatively, your VA/SQ miles won't help with this, but surely QF via SYD is worth considering? One stop to JNB from both MEL and AKL. I don't think QF is having a sale at the moment but earlier in the month you could book MEL-JNB for $1398 return on QF. They may have other similar sales in the future.

 

[andye]

If you can find the availability that sounds like a job for (bought) AA miles especially for AKL. In J 50K each way if book before 22 Mar, 80K after (37.5K/42.5K in Y). Would have to go with QF for those prices as cannot route via Asia/Middle East without paying for 2 awards (having said that HKG-JNB on CX not bad for availability)
VA redemptions on SAA not particularly cheap but an option

 

[wandering_fred]

If you have miles enough for a one way trip, remember that airfares EX South Africa are a whole lot less than exsouthwest Pacific. While I about others, QF has horrible one way fares and CX is rather reasonable. SQ/EY/EK fares are left as learning exercise.

Happy wandering

Fred