Strategy for booking award tickets to Africa

I am planning a trip for 3 from US to Nairobi & Cape Town next summer and want to use miles for all 3 seats in business class. Should I start by looking for one way tickets for the outbound dates, and then when the time comes, book one ways for the return...........or...........start looking 331 days out from our return date?

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

 

You do realize that it's much more convenient to book a Roundtrip so you can make use of the free stopover allowed so for example...

USA->NBO // NBO->CPT // CPT->USA would be 120,000 Miles Total ... If you book one-ways you can't make use of the free stopover.

 

You can also add segments to make a one-way into a roundtrip. So in this case you could book the outbound flights at 331 or whatever, assuming availability, then book the return at 331 (you get a stopover or.open jaw) and fill on the intra-Africa later (or when you book the return, if available).

Just beware that if you don't have status to avoid the fees, this could result in three different rounds of fees. Not sure about how they'd handle that.

 

Also, for international, if you're looking at a segment and have a stop that's < 23 hours, 59 minutes, it's not a stopover, so you can, in theory, have quite a few of those. With some creative routings, you can get a taste of many places.

 

Managed to get this done for a trip last summer. www.awardnexus.com is your friend.
Good luck and have a wonderful trip. PM me if I can be of any help.

 

Good point....this would be my first choice. Wonder what the odds would be of finding 3 of these?

 

Wow.....looks like a really powerful tool to use! I didn't want to use up my "points" this early in the game, but once it gets closer to time to book this trip, which by my estimation will be sometime in September, I will definately start here.

Do I actually book through this site, or does it just find what is available, and then I call UA to book? By the way, I am 1K.

 

This seems like a good plan as well. The intra-Africa seems to be readily available for this August, so I am hoping it will be the same next summer. NBO > CPT is around $900 (yikes!!!) but can be had for 25,000 pts. (12,500 in coach) and 39.50 which is better than cash any day.

I am 1K so no fees.....very helpful last summer when I had to change 5 intra-China award flights for my family when China decided to close Tibet and I had to redo our entire itinerary 48 hours before we were to leave home!

 

If you decided to do them all as one ways you're shooting yourself in the foot by paying extra (just saying)...

 

FYI a routing to Africa via the Pacific is one of the most efficient uses (miles spent vs. actual miles traveled) of miles in the UA program. I did EWR-PVG/stopover in Shanghai/PVG-IST/18h in Istanbul/IST-NBO-DAR/week in Zanzibar/DAR-NBO-ZRH/18h in Zurich/ZRH-FRA-ICN-LAX/18h in LA/LAX-EWR last year on a combination of CO, TK, LX and OZ in J for 120k. Awesome trip.