Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - South African Airlines To Go Nonstop IAD-JNB

TravelInfo (http://www.travelinfo.co.za/news/story.asp?newsID=29179)

SAA will operate a non-stop flight from Washington to Johannesburg from October 30, reducing flight time from North America by three hours, said Nomfanelo Magwentshu, SAA gm business development at a media briefing this morning. Previously the flight stopped in Dakar. According to SAA, this would be the only non-stop flight from North America to South Africa but the flight to Washington will still stop in Dakar.

One weekly additional peak season flight will also be operated to Perth, London and Frankfurt during the December/January period, Magwentshu said. According to SAA’s new head of network planning and scheduling, Max Riley, the additional Perth service was due to demand from VFR traffic, whilst the London and Frankfurt services were to cater to growing inbound demand.

Other changes for the winter schedule include operating a B747-400 to Sao Paulo over December/January and changing the flight from Entebbe, Uganda to Johannesburg to a night flight. Livingstone will be served daily from October 29, compared with the current thrice-weekly flight.

In other news:
SAA will announce two new long-haul destinations and two new regional destinations before the end of the year, said Nomfanelo Magwentshu, SAA gm business development, at a media briefing this morning. She said SAA had short-listed three cities in both North America and Europe from which the two new long-haul destinations would be selected. The regional destinations under consideration were one central African and one West African city, she said.

A friend of mine (travel consultant) has suggested that with the extra service Johannesburg to Perth, Australia, A340-300s will replace the 342s currently operating services.

I don't know much about SAA and don't frequent this forum area much, so sorry if this has been known for a long time or has been posted before

Cheers

Outstanding information -- thanks for posting! We need more SAA threads on this forum.

Thanks for the heads up. ^ I hadn't spotted any of this before. Naturally none of it is on their web site. :rolleyes:

I've always been baffled about the stop on the way from IAD. They used to fly non-stop from ATL with jumbo's. And when they bought the A345's one advantage they touted was their ability to fly non-stop to the US. It's not clear to me how many times a week this service will run. Presumably some of the flights still have to stop in Dakar on the way back (unless they want to operate a triangular route - surely not!).

Oh, and what is "VFR traffic"?

any suggestions as to the European and USA cities shortlisted?

any suggestions as to the European and USA cities shortlisted? They recently had that game where they invited you to choose destinations you would like to see SA fly to. Wonder if it helped them choose?

My choices? Hmm... let's see. They've tried several and quit them (Milan & Copenhagen in Europe and FLL in US come to mind).

Maybe Amsterdam? Loads of links between SAfrica and the Netherlands - I've always been surprised they don't serve AMS. Plus stick it to the opposition alliance.

How about Vienna? Link with *A partner hub and there are no direct flights between SAfrica and VIE at present. OS used to fly to JNB and CPT at one stage. Seems a good bet to me (unless the bad experience of OS has scared them off).

Pretty sure they must be looking at other UA hubs and Chicago must be a consideration. And LAX is quite doable from Dakar (6266 miles). But a long shot (pun intended) IMO.

Or maybe FLL again. Not a UA hub, but reachable without stopover and plenty of connections on UA and AC.

Note, that it said "North America" not "USA". Could that mean that Toronto is a possibility? Loads of expats there and a large part of the trafiic between SAfrica and Canada would surely opt to avoid the US if they could. And another *A hub.

If you force me to choose I'll say the short list is Chicago, Amsterdam and Vienna. And ORD and VIE will win out. Anyone else want to stick their necks out?

Oh, and what is "VFR traffic"?

Glad it was useful ^

Cheetah_SA, VFR traffic refers to passengers who are Visiting Friends and Relatives, which are generally classified as low-yield, IIRC.

Rgds

If you force me to choose I'll say the short list is Chicago, Amsterdam and Vienna. And ORD and VIE will win out. Anyone else want to stick their necks out?

I especially agree with the Chicago vote. I would think that SAA could do very well with the UAL feed.

I have no idea how well SAA's JNB-HKG service does (I took the flight once in F, and loved it), but it would be great if they could extend it into a JNB-HKG-LAX service. CX obviously has a lot of activity to HKG out of LAX, but Star Alliance members would love to have UA or any *Alliance member fly directly to HKG again. Definitely a dream scenario, but we can always think big!

This is great, unless they leave the departure at 12:50pm. No way you can get to IAD from SFO to make the flight without doing the redeye. Hopefully it will be around 6pm or so.

Does anyone know what the schedule will be?

This is great, unless they leave the departure at 12:50pm. No way you can get to IAD from SFO to make the flight without doing the redeye. Hopefully it will be around 6pm or so.

Does anyone know what the schedule will be? The SAA website shows the departure at 17h00 arriving at 15h45.

That works. First flight from SFO arrives IAD at 14h34. Yippee. Now if SAA would be more generous about releasing Z seats JNB to HKG, I would be a really happy camper. RTW on UA/SAA is nearly $2000 less than *RTW. Since I go from SFO, I don't really care which way I go, but the HKG seats are hard to score either way unless very far in advance. Oh well, this is a big step in the right direction.

How about Vienna? Link with *A partner hub and there are no direct flights between SAfrica and VIE at present. OS used to fly to JNB and CPT at one stage. Seems a good bet to me (unless the bad experience of OS has scared them off).


SA used to fly between VIE and JNB as well (via ZRH) - quite some time ago (up to the mid nineties). There was talk about extending the ZRH flight (again) to VIE about a year ago but nothing materialised as they opted for LX/OS codeshares on the route ZRH-VIE. I can't quite imagine that there is enough traffic for a JNB-VIE route.

this is a good news ^

cheers for this.

Thank You. ^

Quick question: Is F still only sold on just the LHR and IAD routes?

And when GRU gets a 747 over Dec/Jan, will SAA start selling a F cabin on that route too?

South African Airways

SA 208
IAD 17:00
JNB 15:45+1
Non-stop
15h45min

Aircraft A340-600

Speculation is rife, that South African may increase PER to daily, switch services to 747-400 or start a new service to Melbourne, Australia, with Air New Zealand then flying passengers onto Auckland/Wellington/Christchurch etc.

Interesting times ahead!

Speculation is rife, that South African may increase PER to daily, switch services to 747-400 or start a new service to Melbourne, Australia, with Air New Zealand then flying passengers onto Auckland/Wellington/Christchurch etc.

Interesting times ahead! That sounds plausible too. Forgot about the NZ connection. I just assumed they wouldn't want to risk upsetting the QF relationship since it must be fairly unpopular with all the other alliance partners on both sides.

Thank You. ^

Quick question: Is F still only sold on just the LHR and IAD routes?

And when GRU gets a 747 over Dec/Jan, will SAA start selling a F cabin on that route too? Only on LHR/JNB not IAD, I believe. Occasionally one crops up on LHR/CPT. The rest of them are on regional routes like Luanda, Lagos, Accra. I always wonder why they use the 747's (with the only F they have) on comparatively short haul regional routes. Seems inefficient. Unless they need the cargo capacity of the bigger planes?

So far they only have J/Y fares showing for the GRU flights. But if you book in J the F cabin is available - not even blocked off for Voyager elites! It's a steal in Z at under R20k!!!