South African Airways continues to expand

South African Airways (SAA) is continuing to expand its route network in Europe, North America, South America and Africa by adding exciting new destinations to each of these continents, according to Thevan Krishna, Regional Manager for SAA in Australia and New Zealand.

“The new developments will grow SAA’s international capacity by 8%. SAA’s network strategy is to fly to friendly international gateways, taking advantage of our Star Alliance partners’ hubs”, said Thevan.

“SAA will launch a third destination into North America this year, after terminating services to Atlanta in June 2006, the airline will begin four flights per week between Johannesburg and Chicago from 8 May 2007.” “Chicago is the largest hub of our Star Alliance partner United Airlines and will offer seamless connections to 91 destinations in North America on our Star partners.”

“In addition to this, SAA flights from New York to Johannesburg will operate non-stop from May 8th, saving at least 6 hours of flying time for those passengers currently flying via Europe, and four hours if flying on our American competition.” “This decision has been taken as a result of the overwhelming success of the Washington to Johannesburg non-stop flights which started in October 2006.”

“Currently SAA flies daily between Johannesburg and JFK in New York via Dakar in Senegal and daily between Johannesburg and Washington.”

“Our growth into North American will make us a formidable contender for other carriers operating there. It also provides our customers with convenience, more choice and flexibility,” said Thevan.

“In South America, SAA will also launch new flights to Buenos Aires in July 2007 with 3 flights per week, as the airline’s second entry point into that region. These flights will allow SAA to capture emerging “South to South” traffic flows associated with growing trade and investment between Australia and emerging economies in the Southern hemisphere, including Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India and Malaysia.”

“These flights will offer good connections to 7 countries in South America, including Chile, Uruguay and Peru and will complement our current operations to Sao Paulo, as part of SAA’s dual gateway into South America.”  “Sao Paulo which is operated daily is one of SAA’s most profitable routes and is growing in popularity. SAA will also add three additional flights per week to Sao Paulo bringing the total number of flights to 10 per week.”  “Flights will originate in Mumbai, India and operate via Johannesburg to capture the growing trade between these countries generated by the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) forum.”

“SAA customers may soon be able to fly to a third South American destination, Rio de Janeiro, which the airline is currently looking at entering.

Report by The Mole