Delta, so far the only US airline to fly into South Africa, celebrated the fifth anniversary of its arrival at the weekend. Jimmy Eichelgruen, its regional manager for Europe, Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, who is based in London, and Margaret Copeland, its general manager in this country, told me they were delighted with its success.
However, it flies only into Johannesburg at present. It withdrew its Cape Town-to-New York services two years ago because, although there was a high demand for economy seats, it attracted too few business class passengers from here.
Eichelgruen and Copeland told me demand for business class seats on their daily flights to Atlanta from Joburg was so high they sometimes had to turn people away. The seats averaged 90 percent occupancy throughout the year.
The airline assumed – wrongly, I think – that there are too few passengers who fly business class in Cape Town. But when I told them that Emirates’ research had shown a high proportion of very senior business executives have their family homes in Cape Town and commute from Joburg during the week, Eichelgruen admitted that the lack of demand for business class from here was probably because the aircraft they used for their Cape Town operation did not have lie-flat seats, a major drawback on a 17-hour flight.
Delta uses a new-generation Boeing 777 with, of course, lie-flat seats in business class, for the flights from Joburg, but it did not have one available for Cape Town.
Hopefully, when it has more in its fleet and looks at the success of other airlines flying from here – including Emirates, which now has two flights a day – it may try again.
Delta was a founder member of the Sky Team alliance of international airlines, together with KLM and Air France – which have now merged while keeping their separate identities – and Alitalia.
Before it started its own service to this country, SAA carried its passengers to the US under code-share arrangements. It was one of SAA’s most successful code-share arrangements but, unfortunately, our national carrier was persuaded to give it up when it joined the Star Alliance in favour of a code-share with another partner whose passengers it carries on the less popular route to Washington.
Delta used the knowledge of our market it had gained through the code-share with SAA to start its own route to Joburg.
Now it is expanding throughout Africa, with routes to six African cities in five countries, including Nigeria and Ghana, providing competition for SAA which attracts passengers from some other African countries to its US flights from Joburg. - Weekend Argus