Delta Skymiles redemption on SAA ending in 2006
 

Aug 31, 2006 is the last day you can redeem Delta Skymiles for award travel on SAA. See this link for more details -

https://www.delta.com/skymiles/about...l/04/index.jsp

That's because SAA is joining the Star Alliance; Delta is a member of Skyteam.

On the other hand, once SAA joins (which is scheduled for sometime in the first half of next year) you ought to be able to fly on SAA with United, Lufthansa, US Air and numerous other Star members' FF miles.

Hi Patty,

Kenya Air is supposed to be joining SkyTeam sometime next year, so Delta Skymiles will still enable you to get to Africa!

Cheers,
Julian

Just from the title of the thread, I knew Patty had some interesting information for us. You're great!

i'm flying saa jfk-jnb..would it be better to join saa ff program or put the miles on deltas for the entire sfo/jnb? would the saa miles be retroactive for the star alliance?
thanks
Dennis

SAA's own miles will certainly be good on SAA, and probably good on their other partners' flights too, including other Star players. Such details are often left until the last minute, or beyond, sadly.
:(

Gardyloo,
I've known that SAA would be joining Star Alliance and ending their partnership with Delta for quite some time now, but this is the first time I've seen an official final redemption date posted on the DL website, so I thought I'd give everyone a heads up.

Julian,
I'm hoping the addition of Kenya Airways will translate into more award seats particularly for East Africa. Right now the only single award redemption option to East Africa is on KLM. Redemption on KL is difficult though definitely possible as I was able to get 2 business class award seats twice this year. Emirates requires 2 awards (as does SAA) from North America to East Africa.

For South Africa, single awards will still be available on KLM and Air France after the SAA partnership ends, though AF first class seats will no longer be available for DL Skymiles redemption effective Jan 1, 2006 (only economy and business). Other multiple award options would be Emirates or a combination of DL/Malaysia via Buenos Aires (the latter would make for an interesting stopover).

A couple of months ago, I used Delta SkyMiles to book roundtrip to Upington, South Africa for next Summer (Upington is the nearest airport to Kgalagadi). Thanks for this link because I'll probably book another trip for Summer 2007 and I'll need to book that before next August 2006. Thanks again, Michael

Patty, Gardyloo-i'm confused, what would you reccommend I do: keep the miles on delta sfo-jfk-jnb, or put them on saa, i think as it's a codeshare i would have a choice. the only miles i have now are aloha airlines (150,000) which could be used on United . Thanks, dennis

Keep them on Delta. What will you do with some miles on SAA, unless you intend to pay for more flights on SAA so you can earn miles in their program.

Unless I am able to return to Southern Africa by August 31, 2006, it looks like I will be flying business class, or even first class, to Argentina.

Where is the best place to place my AMEX membership rewards points now for Southern Africa travel???

Rocco,
Aug 31, 2006 is the last day you can redeem Skymiles on SAA, but you can actually travel through Aug 31, 2007 (see details in the link). So you'll still be able to use your Skymiles provided you can plan your flights before the end of next August.

After that? The other Skymiles redemption options that I mentioned above will still get you as far as JNB or CPT. One option that I forgot to list above is Virgin Atlantic. In all of these cases though, you would need to purchase your own onward flight to other southern Africa destinations.

There's no way to transfer Amex MR points directly to the ff program of any Star Alliance carrier that I know of. There are some indirect ways but you lose a lot of points in the process. United never participated in MR and US Air is ending their participation in MR effective Jan 1, 2006.

Dennis,
I'm not familiar with SAA's program, but unless you plan to fly them with some frequency in the future, I would think that it makes more sense to credit your flight miles for this trip to Delta. How are you getting from ITO to SFO?

Rocco,
I spoke too soon earlier. I took a look at the Membership Rewards site and though no US based Star Alliance carriers will be participating next year, there's still Air Canada and ANA. You could investigate those programs. I doubt that they have any information about SAA redemption at the moment and probably won't until SAA officially joins.

Patty:
I did not know that US Air was leaving MR. Darn, I made a mistake then by using some miles for a U.S. upgrade, confident that I would be able to replenish when I needed to with MR points. You can transfer to USAir between now and Jan, 2006?
[Thanks for these updates.]

bat,
I only found it about it recently too. You can still transfer through the end of the year. I would follow this thread in case of any new developments with the MR/US relationship -

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ferrerid=18562

Patty- flying aloha airlines to oakland, using ff miles.
Thanks for your advice

We just came back from using delta ff points to get to South Africa. We went by way of Amsterdam and the flight over took about 2 hours longer than direct to Cape Town from Atl on SAA. The return flight is the difficult part as there is a misconnect and a forced overnight in Amsterdam. However, we enjoyed KLM and had no problems with any of the flights.