It isn’t often you celebrate the launch, or in this case, return of an airline, some 3000 kms away from its nearest port. But such is the significance of South African Airways’ return to Australia, through Perth, that a party was called for… in Sydney.
In fact, the Aussie market is so important to SAA that the Western Australian capital is just the second international route the carrier has resumed since the pandemic. It could have even been the first.
“Perth was second… and Sao Paulo was first because of BRICS [alliance],” South African Airways Australia Country Manager Michael Hall tells Karryon in an interview at the Sydney event.
“Perth has always been one of the most successful routes in the entire network and will continue to be.”
Because of that, Hall says the airline aims to grow the route in the not-too-distant future.
“So, we want to build it fast. But we’ve got to start with the aircraft available at the moment… we have to start with three [services] a week and build from there,” he remarks.
“The goal, as the CEO has said, is to go daily again.”
South African Airways will continue utilising its A340-300 aircraft on the route. But Hall says the airline has stated that it wants to bring newer planes to Australia.
“The problem is… it’s not that easy getting your hands on aircraft.”
“The A340 is a very comfortable aircraft – economy seats have a 32-inch pitch and business class is the old Skybed – so lay flat. You can walk right around it.
“The difference with getting on SAA is when you get on, you actually step into Africa. So the food, the service is spectacular.”
Hall is emotional when he talks about the effort it took to bring the airline back to Australia. And it seems SAA’s return to Australia also meant a lot to plenty of others.
“Our first flights are now close to 80 per cent in and out, which is fantastic,” he explains.
“May’s a bit softer because traditionally May is a really soft month and we’ve only been selling since January 8. But then we see June, July and the rest of the months pick up again… and again a strong December and January when all of that VFR traffic travels at the end of the year. So it’s going in the right direction.”
East to West
But it isn’t just Western Australians jumping on the new service, with half of the carrier’s Perth flights filling up from the East Coast.
While “Sydney is a little bit different because it’s dominated by another carrier [Qantas]”, he explains that travellers from Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide are keen on the service “because [from] all those three cities, you have to go via somewhere to get to Africa”.
“If you use us from Melbourne to Johannesburg, we’re the fastest.”
Fair fares
Having competitive fares helps too.
“To stimulate the market, we are running fares similar to pre-COVID… to get the market moving,” Hall says.
“And in the long term, we don’t see the fares being that much higher than pre-pandemic. Maybe 15 per cent [higher].
“I think there’s been a normalisation in airfares over the past 12 months. I think it’s come back quite a bit – and going to Africa is not that expensive.”
Hall also states how much travel agents mean to South Africa’s national carrier.
“The trade is everything to us. We make no bones about it,” he says.
“We don’t actively market directly to the consumer. All of our marketing is co-operative with South African Tourism to trade, with our trade partners – so everything is trade.”
And the industry was certainly out in force for this event, with operators like Scenic, Bench Africa and Wendy Wu Tours joining a host of agents to celebrate the carrier’s comeback alongside SAA.
