Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - SAA introduces direct flights to PEK, at a great price too!

Here's the link a lot of you probably got:

http://www.flysaa.com/za/en/newroutes/china.html

This is not new news in South Africa, as the airline is state-owned and political visits to China indicated the fact.

The surprise is the price - Appr $ 900 return all inc in discounted Y. Seat selection still possible at time of booking. Price turns out cheaper than any other airline at this stage.

Hope this catches on!

Interesting.
I would have expected that PVG would be a more popular busness destination. The cynic in me suspects that the choice of PEK was motivated to assist our government honchos in their travel plans.
The low price helps to save the goverment's travel budget. And the taxpayer funds the loss of the route anyway....:rolleyes:

The cynic in me suspects that the choice of PEK was motivated to assist our government honchos in their travel plans.

+1

Well our deputy president was in PEK only a month or two ago. That's the beauty (and drawback) of a state-owned airline.

On another point, I see they assigned the A346 to the route. As SA does not have 772LR's would the A332 not be much more fuel efficient for such a long flight? Or does the A332's range not cover a 15 hour flight?

+1

Well our deputy president was in PEK only a month or two ago. That's the beauty (and drawback) of a state-owned airline.

On another point, I see they assigned the A346 to the route. As SA does not have 772LR's would the A332 not be much more fuel efficient for such a long flight? Or does the A332's range not cover a 15 hour flight?

I think you have got the reason there. The 346 seems to be the only A/C in the fleet with the required range. And we don't want the hobnobs to have to make an intermediate stop, don't we? Or maybe they are expecting a lot of them to want to travel to PEK. And they of course need the 42 J seats. The back might be rather empty.....;)

Truly a political route. The departure in JNB at 8 am is a joke, no connections possible even from CPT or DUR. It's obvious that SA doesn't have any other plane available for this service with a better timing, however pushing the flights two hours later would already help a lot (could even get feed from GRU). The A346 is way too large, so expect a lot of special offers for this route.

Interesting.
The cynic in me suspects that the choice of PEK was motivated to assist our government honchos in their travel plans.
+1

But, we'll never know the true reason b/c it's a state secret. And, thijsseh, you're going to jail for even guessing correctly!

A great Y fare, but are they any SA government ministers that fly Y? What's the pecking order for who gets upgraded? (Probably a secret too, shouldn't ask...).

+1

And, thijsseh, you're going to jail for even guessing correctly!



Oh my gosh, I had forgotten about that. :D

It seems obvious that the Y fare is so low because there is no way they would fill up those +/- 300 seats with regular paying passengers. Thats probably the total traffic in a month, not twice a week. Oh dear, now I've done it again. Double jail sentence.

At least they changed the timings now for better connections in JNB:

http://airlineroute.net/2011/12/25/sa-jnbpek-feb12update2/