johan rebel

"SAA wants to expand its African network by increasing its fifth-freedom flights.

SAA was in talks with Zimbabwe about Harare-London flights, with Zambia about Lusaka-London and with Uganda about Entebbe-London.

Europe will also be a major focus for SAA in 2018, as well as China and the US. The plan will be to reduce the frequency or cancel loss-making routes, such as Brazil."

Source

Johan

Ldnn1

I'm rather sceptical SA could make HRE-LHR work if they can't even do CPT-LHR.

evanb

Likely, although there might be a case for better O&D, but the yields would be a worry. I think this is more of an exploration exercise as to which countries will grant fifth freedom routes and to see if they can extract any subsidies from countries/cities in order to do so.

Rumor has it that the JNB-ACC-IAD flight is doing well, but there are murmurings that they could lose the fifth freedoms due to lobbying from local vested interests.

lhrsfo

Do they have the planes or the LHR slots to do any of this?

escapefromphl

i'm assuming they are going to fly JNB-HRE-LHR and the reverse, so they can sell the 1 stop as well?

evanb

They have two daily slots (both morning arrival and early evening departure).

thijsseh

Yes, they sold the third slot pair a few years ago when they discontinued the CPT - LHR - CPT fights.
Appearently that was the first slot pair to be sold in many years, they are scarcer than hen's teeth, so the probability of ever getting a third pair seems remote.

Cheetah_SA

The article says "London" not "LHR". Surely a more plausible scenario for testing the waters would be LGW (or even further afield) to keep costs down?

Selling the family silver is a common tactic among the black sheep in families. They probably thought it would shore up the balance sheet a bit... but that could never be effective against the continual pillaging of the company by its board - with government's collusion.

When BA bought bmi the real prize, and the only reason to pay anything for a company that wasn't viable on its own and whose routes were largely abandoned, was their LHR slots. Slots do change hands occasionally - the ME airlines have been buyers as they expand at LHR - but AFAIK the price is seldom disclosed.

evanb

Indeed, plenty of slots change hands all the time. In addition to ME3 buying slots, many US and Asian carriers have also acquired slots. However, there is huge variation in the value of those slot depending on the timing and whether one holds them on all seven days and even how they vary based on the winter or summer IATA schedule. SAA's slots were/are prized since they are early morning arrivals and early evening departure.

Many of the BMI slots were randomly spaced during the day and not quite as valuable. Through the deal BA acquired 56 slot pairs for GBP 172.5 million, but had to relinquish some of them on some domestic routes where the competition authorities felt that a BA monopoly would be anti-competitive.