A few years ago Comair – British Airways’ (BA) franchise holder in southern Africa – was tempted to enter the intercontinental market with flights to Heathrow. The British airline made it clear to Comair that it would prefer its franchise holder to build its route network within Africa, providing feeder services between BA destinations in other African countries and South Africa, and the idea was dropped.
Now, with our government no longer protecting SAA and anxious to encourage more airlines to bring tourists into this country, Comair has seen an opening and is planning to fly between Durban and Gatwick, starting next year, with three flights a week. The KwaZulu-Natal government is encouraging Comair by providing an additional lounge and another maintenance facility. There would be no competition with BA, which has no immediate plans for nonstop flights to Durban or between SA and Gatwick.
Fouad Khaunye, regional manager of Emirates Airline in southern Africa, told me there had been a surge in the number of passengers from this country in their financial year that has just ended. He said Emirates’ passenger loads from South Africa average 80 percent, with those from Durban slightly higher than from here and Johannesburg. It’s not surprising, because Emirates has increased the number of its flights to two a day from Cape Town, in addition to three a day from Johannesburg and became the only international airline apart from Air Mauritius to fly from King Shaka Airport with one flight a day.
As a result of the strong demand from this country, it will use one of its fleet of 15 giant Airbus 380s on the route from Johannesburg to its home airport of Dubai, from which it offers connecting flights to destinations all over the world, from October 1. It will be the third airline to use the A380 on the Johannesburg route. Air France was the first to do so, followed by German airline Lufthansa.
What is of even more interest, in view of the fact that some airlines withdraw their services to Cape Town in winter because it is regarded as a seasonal route attracting mainly leisure travellers and some others give its seasonality as a reason for not coming here at all, is that Emirates does not regard our three international airports as serving different markets but sees South Africa as one market.
Most airlines target the corporate market because it is the most profitable, providing frequent flyers who travel in the premium class seats. Khaunye said that, although Johannesburg is the economic and business capital of South Africa, corporate bookings have shown Emirates that many very senior business people live in Cape Town.
In addition to that, he said, many business travellers from overseas arrive in Johannesburg but leave from Cape Town or Durban. And both Cape Town and Durban attract large numbers of corporate passengers for events and conferences. Watching Emirates’ success here and in Durban may, with luck, make more airlines realise that it’s worth while to come to Cape Town and stay for the winter, even if, like some already here, they reduce the number of flights in the winter months.
Giovanni Bisignani, the fiery and determined director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, has criticised governments for using concern about global warming to introduce punative taxes on airlines that push up the cost of flying without ring-fencing the tax money for measures to improve the environment. On a visit to SA last week he also blamed greed on the part of oil companies for preventing a more rapid switch to non-polluting fuels made from non-food plants and algae. He said IATA had hoped the oil companies would join in the development and manufacture of these fuels. Instead, the oil companies preferred to make huge profits from their refinery margins using fossil oil.
He was particularly scathing about the high tariffs Airports Company, South Africa is allowed to charge which, he said, would add $1.2 billion to airline costs, and a new requirement the European Union plans to introduce next year for airlines flying into its territories to buy carbon trading units to compensate for their emissions during the whole return journey. IATA and individual member airlines, including SAA, are hoping to prevent this by pointing out that it is illegal for the EU to attempt to charge for emissions outside its own air space. - Weekend Argus