Help!

I’m trying to book some tickets for a spot of travelling to be done in July 2004, departing 23/07/04.

I need to:

Fly from the UK to South Africa
Fly on to Melbourne

both trips with my fiancee

Then fly home alone to the UK

I haven’t been able to book anything whatsoever, at least not without paying through the nose!

The problem seems to be the South Africa-Australia routes. I always thought they were biggies, but no bugger flies apart from SAA which charge £1,000 single per person!! The indirect airlines (Emirates, SIA etc) are about £1,500 per person. The cheaper option is to fly LON-JNB-LON-MEL-LON which is a load cheaper. But I would be a zombie after that, besides which I don’t want to spend my entire holiday in an aeroplane 😉

As an aside, it is about 25% cheaper to buy a LON-MEL return ticket and throw away the first leg, rather than buy a MEL-LON ticket…madness.

Thanks in advance folks.