The Flight Deal brings us a unique opportunity for cheap fares to South Africa.

South African Airways, Copyright manganganath / 123RF Stock Photo

• Expedia’s New Zealand website is offering better deals than other sites right now. That’s the Expedia site that issues tickets in New Zealand, pricing them in New Zealand dollars. I love Expedia’s local country sites because sometimes there are better fares that can only be sold inside a country and that’s a convenient way to buy those tickets.

• These fares are available between Washington DC or New York and Johannesburg on South African Airways, and also available with continuing service elsewhere in South Africa.

• If you search the ITA software site and find US$766 DC-Johannesburg roundtrips, those appear to price at NZ$544 — which is only about US$390! (Fares are ~ $23 more to Capetown, $127 more from New York.)

• This seems to be available for departures September through early December.

I pulled up a calendar of lowest fares using the ITA Matrix. I wanted to find dates with the lowest price to see just how low they’d go on the Expedia New Zealand site.

I pulled up an itinerary at that price:

Then pulled up the same itinerary using Expedia.co.nz.

And I converted New Zealand dollars to US dollars:

If you decide to go to South Africa:

• Be sure to use a credit card that doesn’t add foreign transaction fees, because this is a purchase from New Zealand in New Zealand dollars.

• Wait a few days to make additional non-refundable travel arrangements. I don’t have significant experience with South African Airways’ decision to stand behind deep discount sale fares like this. (Although if by chance they don’t, the DOT should require them to cover any non-refundable costs incurred in reliance on their fare however we don’t have a lot of real world experience with that either.)

Victoria and Alfred waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa, Copyright: edan / 123RF Stock Photo