Cape Town - Virgin Atlantic Airways and Air France are returning to Cape Town airport this month with their seasonal flights. This offers us more choices in addition to those provided all year round by British Airways, Emirates, KLM, Turkish Airlines and Singapore Airlines, and by Lufthansa, Edelweiss and Condor from now until autumn.
Both Virgin and Air France say they have heavy bookings from incoming passengers, which will boost our tourism industry and compensate for the withdrawal of SAA’s flights from here to London.
The first Air France flight will arrive on October 24 and will fly nonstop to Paris three times a week until May 12, with the service lasting six weeks longer than it did last year. Spokeswoman Lorna Burke says the additional six weeks are part of Air France and KLM’s African expansion policy, which includes KLM’s new route between Amsterdam and Harare starting at the end of this month.
Air France and KLM have merged successfully although each airline has retained its individual character. Both offer daily flights from Johannesburg all year round. KLM is currently offering a special fare to Toronto from Johannesburg – unfortunately not from Cape Town – for R5 000, which can be booked until October 12. Outbound travel must be between November 3 and 30, with a minimum stay of seven days and a maximum of one year.
The first of Virgin’s seasonal flights from here to London will arrive on October 18.
There will be three a week until the end of this month when the service will increase to daily until April 28. Marketing executive Bonita Noli said incoming bookings were heavy, and the airline was hoping for a pickup in demand for outbound flights from local passengers.
The high air passenger duty charged at British airports was discouraging travel to that country, but Virgin was joining other airlines including rival British Airways in campaigning for this to be reduced.
Guarantee
SAA, which withdrew its flights to London from Cape Town in August in order to use the aircraft on routes to other parts of Africa and to serve growing markets in Asia, has been given a R5 billion guarantee from the government that will enable it to raise money to acquire new generation aircraft using less fuel.
This is in line with most of the industry, which has been hit hard by the soaring cost of fuel. Although SAA has received billions of rands in government help before, most of this has been due to costly mistakes made by previous management and boards. The handouts drew understandable protests from our privately owned airlines, which objected to their taxes being used to fund competition against them. They did not object this time when it was suggested that the government, as the only shareholder, should recapitalise SAA to enable it to compete against foreign airlines by acquiring a new fleet.
Unfortunately, however, advice given by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, when a new board was recently appointed to South African Express Airline – state-owned but not part of SAA – sounded ominously like encouragement for the state-owned airlines to increase their share of the domestic and regional market at the expense of other South African airlines.
In the days when SAA had a monopoly of almost all the routes in this country, air travel within our borders was very expensive, keeping the market small. It grew rapidly once competition was introduced and flying became affordable for more of us.
Erik Venter, chief executive of Comair, said recently that it would not be good for the local industry if his airline’s main rival, 1Time, which is now trading under the protection of business rescue, went under, reducing competition in the market.
It would be even worse if SAA regained its virtual monopoly. - Weekend Argus