Booking internal flights for Africa can be a total nightmare!

I have just booked flights for September.
Top quote from a leading online flights company was £6500 I have used the company before many times! I even phoned them with no better results!

So I need South African Airways or Air Botswana to get to my destination - Johannesburg to Maun & return.
No flights available on my requested dates the £6500 was for departures a day early!

Air Botswana or SA Airways had no vacancies - Joburg to Maun when I used their za or dot com sites.

Air Botswana. co.uk had no seats on the Johannesburg Maun flights only!

But when I tried booking London to Maun they had seats available. £4500 cheaper than by an online flights company!

(I paid & booked )

I would assume that airlines alot blocks of seats to different companies & in the case of Air Botswana they save seats for international travellers as opposed to local traveller, better profit!

The twist to this is that our flight from London is with South African Airways on a British Airways flight booked with Air Botswana!

I, like you, wish I could figure out the African airlines. I once looked into flying Northwest Airlines to Amsterdam and then Kenya Airways to Nairobi. The Kenya Airways amount from Amsterdam to Nairobi
was $6,500 USD - yet I was paying only $1,400.00 USD for US-Amsterdam-Nairobi and return. Who in their
right mind, even if wealthy, would pay that much more when you can get the product much cheaper from another airline?

I'll bet the Kenyan people flying Nairobi-Amsterdam and return don't pay anywhere near the $6,500.00.
Thus it just makes me wonder if they are playing games with international travelers. Then they wonder why business is down!

I booked KLM from Amsterdam to Nairobi for July 1 for €600 and thought that was high. I guess it could have been worse.

I think in general there has been a 10 -15% rise in air fares over the past year or two & not just to Africa.

Kipper - try from the UK on the following sites if you have not booked; they use national airlines and can get good deals at times.

www.lastminute.com (maybe .co.uk for you).
check www.tripadvisor.com as well - they have a travel section to book.

Have you tried Mr Brandson airlines - ? Virgin?
BA - they may be doing something?

My problem was getting from Johannesburg to Maun, the only way I could get this flight was by a combined booking with Air Botswana.
I tried all the usual online flight agents, if they had available flights to Maun the price was astronomical!
Most just could not offer flights to Maun, some could not even recognise Maun as an airport!!