From late October Lufthansa flights between Cape Town and Germany will fly to and from Munich rather than Frankfurt.
Flights will depart from the Bavarian capital city from October 28, when direct flights between Cape Town and Germany resume for the summer.
A night flight ban in Frankfurt has been restrictively implemented, and already Lufthansa has reduced departures from Frankfurt during the evening, or advanced them to earlier hours.
A spokesman for Lufthansa said Cape Town would be served from Munich five times a week with an Airbus A340-300. Passengers who are already booked on the Frankfurt-Cape Town connection will be rebooked at no charge and informed accordingly in the next few days. The departure times will change only slightly.
This comes as SAA celebrates 60 years of flying to Frankfurt by coming up with one of the best bargains available today.
The airline is offering economy flights between Johannesburg and Frankfurt at R4 620 return, of which just R500 is the fare and the rest taxes and surcharges.
The offer is open until next Friday for travel between November 14 and December 14 or February 1 and February 26 next year.
A similar offer is being made in Germany, where the tickets are on sale until July 14.
When the route was started in 1952 an economy ticket between the two cities cost the equivalent of R62 000 “measured at today’s purchasing power”, says Theunis Potgieter, SAA’s commercial general manager.
The flight was in a Lockheed Gold Plate Constellation, a four-engined propeller aircraft and the first with a pressurised cabin to be used between Africa and Europe. It carried 42 passengers and the flight took 28 hours with refuelling stops in Nairobi, Khartoum and Rome. Today the flying time is 10 hours nonstop and even without a special offer the fare is affordable for many South Africans.
Frankfurt is the second largest airport in Europe, with 56 million passengers a year passing through it, compared with 400 000 around 60 years ago. It is also the headquarters of the international Star Alliance to which both SAA and German airline Lufthansa belong. Lufthansa flies from Frankfurt to Johannesburg year-round.
International hub
SAA is responding to increased demand for services between India and South America by way of Johannesburg – which it is developing as an international hub – and for flights to Perth in Australia and Accra, capital of Ghana.
Potgieter said the airline was “focusing growth on key international destinations”.
Following the withdrawal of Indian airline Jet Airways from this country, SAA has increased its service to Mumbai from four to five flights a week and will add a sixth from August 21 in response to “even stronger demand …”
Potgieter said that with 10 SAA flights a week from Johannesburg to Sao Paulo, the industrial capital of Brazil, and three a week to Buenos Aires – providing the only route to Argentina from this country following the withdrawal of Malaysia Airlines – SAA offered the shortest travel time between India and South America.
Suspending flights
Mango, SAA’s low cost airline, announced this week that it was suspending flights on the “over-traded route” between Johannesburg and Bloemfontein on July 19 but was providing more between Bloemfontein and Cape Town in response to growing demand.
Mango, which recently introduced wi-fi connection in-flight on some flights from Lanseria Airport, has plans to extend the service to its entire network. - Weekend Argus