Emirates, the first Middle Eastern airline to enter the SA market, now has two flights a day from Cape Town in addition to others from Joburg and Durban.
And it is still adding new destinations to its route network, including the Spanish city of Barcelona, to which flights will start in June. Bookings are already being taken.
Emirates started a new route to Dublin from its home airport in Dubai in January, which has proved so popular that the airline intends to substitute a larger Boeing 777 for the Airbus A230 it is currently using.
Dublin is likely to attract a lot of Capetonians and bring many Irish visitors to the city, judging from the numbers who used to book with a charter operation that flew here until three years ago.
Ties have been stronger since the Clipper Round the World race called here last year, with a yacht from Londonderry which strengthened business ties between local companies and some in southern Ireland, and raised interest in tourism to the whole of Ireland.
Emirates’ regional manager for southern Africa, Fouad Caunhye, said the airline was continually growing its network to avoid the position of some competitors when they concentrate on one or two markets and are negatively affected when these fall off.
Business as well as leisure travellers are more willing to use indirect flights than they were a few years ago and even if only a few passengers from SA visit any specific destination, they join others from all over the world in catching connecting flights from Dubai.
Launch new service
Low cost airline 1Time, which celebrated its eighth anniversary last weekend, will launch its new service to the historic port city of Mombasa in Kenya on Monday, with packages including accommodation at varying prices. Bookings have already been encouraging. On the same day, it will also launch flights between Cape Town and Lanseria Airport in Joburg’s northern suburbs, competing on the route with Comair and its low cost division, kulula.com.
Like Comair and kulula, 1Time will continue to fly also from Joburg’s OR Tambo Airport, which became more convenient to use last year when it was connected to the Gautrain.
Lanseria, of course, is a convenient – and less crowded – airport for many people going to Sandton on business or for shopping.
When 1Time was launched in 2004, most people in the industry forecast that it would fail on the grounds that the SA market could not support more than three airlines – SAA, Comair and kulula. But, as had happened in Europe, the market grew rapidly in response to cheaper flights and now also supports Mango, SAA’s low- cost division, while 1Time has about a 15 percent share of the local market.
Like SAA, Comair and SA Express, 1Time plans to expand its route network into Africa.
It already flies to Zanzibar and Livingstone on the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls, offering accommodation packages at both destinations.
The airline industry, worldwide, is having a difficult time this year with soaring fuel costs and falling passenger numbers. Fuel costs seem to be rising even more but, in spite of the euro zone troubles that are also affecting the economies of countries outside it, passenger numbers are rising with an increase in both business travel and tourism, according to the latest International Air Transport Association survey.
Lucky escape
Meanwhile, 1Time seems to have had a narrow escape. Excalibur Aerospace, the controlling shareholder of low-cost airline Velvet Sky, made a successful bid to take control of 1Time, too. But, the deal fell through when Excalibur failed to make the promised payment in time.
At the end of last week, BP applied to have Velvet Sky liquidated on the grounds that it had failed to pay for fuel for three months and as passengers turned up to find their flights had been cancelled, Stephen Nthite, chairman of Excalibur, announced that flights were being suspended until Monday to put their balance sheet in order.
We shall see on Monday whether Velvet Sky is ready for take off once again – and whether it still has passengers turning up to board them. It seems likely that some of those who have already paid will do so, but even if the flights take off, it seems doubtful whether the airline will be able to attract new customers. - Weekend Argus