5 days ago i booked a first/business class roundtrip ff ticket on Delta from Fresno to Joburg on their website. took about 20 minutes and total cost was $76. for those who think they need to pay a travel agent $200-300 plus the taxes involved, IT JUST AIN'T SO!

I have actually paid more than that!!!! At the time, I considered it money well spent.

Although, another time, I did somehow manage to muddle through the process and do it all by myself.

If I can do it, I'm pretty sure that anyone can!

That part is pretty darn easy...then get an agent to do your connection to Zim, Namibia, or wherever if you are going on...

took 10 minutes on the phone with the North Am. office for SAA to book my connecting flight to Bulawayo. total time for EVERYTHING -30 minutes. i am telling you - it ain't that hard. the Delta website is REALLY easy. pick a destination, pick dates, punch them in. i found that travel on different dates would require different mileage amounts. by shifting my departure date back 1 day and mry return date back 1 day, the requirement went from 330,000 miles to 230,000 miles. no big deal. this will probably piss off the travel agents who post here, but it is ridiculous to pay them often well over $200 to do what you can do in a few minutes. they are using the same computer program you can use AND THEY DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO ANY MORE FREQ. FLIER SEATS THAN YOU DO!

as an aside, i went to SAA'S website and got a price quote on the Joburg to Bulawayo flight, given in rand. at today's exchange rate, it came out to $580. picked up the phone and 10 minutes later had my reservation booked in dollars via their Fort Lauderdale call center for $528. i guess it would be nice to be in a position to blow off a $300-400 total savings but i haven't arrived there.

Jdollar,

How many FF miles?

230k on the dates i chose but it varied a lot moving my dates backward or forward by 1 day. from 180k to 330k!!

I used Delta FF miles for my trip in August to/from CO to ATL First class and Business Class to/from ATL to Joburg. My cost was $68.00 and 230K miles.