What about booking with 2 seperate airlines on same trip?
 

For instance--on a trip to South Africa--I am thinking about using FF miles to get as far as Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires, and purchasing a ticket to continue the trip to SA. What if my flight to SP or BA is delayed, cancelled, or diverted at the last minute!! Would I have any recourse for the missed flight onward to South Africa??

No, you probably wouldn't have any recourse. You need to make very loose connections and understand the risks involved. If the airlines have no interline agreement and you are truly traveling on two separate tickets, you will be collecting and re-checking your baggage along with going through the whole scene for a new flight from South America. (I'm not going to tell you that it's not worth it because it may very well be. Just don't treat it like a normal connection in terms of timing because that is not what it is.) I'm not familiar enough with travel insurance products to know if that is a way to mitigate the potential risk.

Sometimes we fly to Africa on different airlines but we stay in Paris for a couple days before and after our flights to/from Africa. Two times our flights were changed or canceled on AF and we were lucky we had those extra days.
Flyboy is right, you won't have any recourse. Maybe you should stop for a couple days in South America before before continuing to Africa. I would do the same on return.

Good suggestions. Thanks to you both.

The advice given is correct if you are buying non-refundable tickets, which I think most of us do. If you are willing to put up the money for a refundable ticket, you can just change to a later flight without penalty. Many business flyers get refundable tickets, as they never know when they will be delayed by business and have to take a later flight.

Actually, you will have some recourse depending upon the airline and the way you book your tickets. If you buy one ticket that has all segments on it, it is a conjuncted ticket and there is some recourse. I used to work with America West, so I'm most familiar with their international contract of carriage, but you should be able to find this information for any airline.

America West's western hemisphere international tariff states in rule 80 section D (http://www.americawest.com/common/re...f_carriage.pdf) that . . . IN THE EVENT A PASSENGER MISSES AN ONWARD CONNECTING FLIGHT ON WHICH SPACE HAS BEEN RESERVED BECAUSE THE DELIVERING CARRIER DID NOT OPERATE ITS FLIGHT ACCORDING TO SCHEDULE OR CHANGED THE SCHEDULE OF SUCH FLIGHT, THE DELIVERING CARRIER WILL ARRANGE FOR THE CARRIAGE OF THE PASSENGER.

The delivering carrier is defined as (in section A3) A CARRIER ON WHOSE FLIGHT A PASSENGER HOLDS OR HELD CONFIRMED SPACE TO A CONNECTING POINT.

This only applies if all segments are on the same ticket. If you buy separate tickets, you're on your own.

clevelandbrown

you are right but the chance to change a travel date without penalty does not give an automatic confirmed reservation on the new requested flight, in case this is already full or overbooked !
You may be waitlisted and final response, whether you fly or not, occur at the boarding gate just 30 minutes before flight departure !