As part of its post Covid relaunch plans South African is set to add more capacity and more destinations to its network in the coming months. Let’s look a little closer to what SAA is planning and doing.
New Planes Introduced in South African Airways’ Fleet
To cope with the rise in passenger request, as the aviation market recovers from covid, South African Airways introduced in late September a new A320. The airline has another 2 on order to come into service by the end of the year.
This will help boost capacity, particularly on short and medium haul routes. The introduction of these A320s brings the SAA all Airbus fleet to 11 units.
Specifically the South African Airways fleet now features:
- 3 A319-100 Which will exits the SAA fleet in 2023
- 5 A320-200
- 1 A330-300
- 2 A340-300
The New South African Airways Routes
SAA will be putting these new A320s to work immediately with new routes being announced by the airline. They are all routes within the African continent. SAA will be commencing operations from and to:
- Johannesburg – Blantyre and Lilongwe in Malawi
- Johannesburg – Windhoek in Namibia
- Johannesburg – Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe
These 3 new destinations will commence before the Christmas festivity season. This means realistically they should be all active and running by the end of November.
Along with the opening of these new routes South African Airways will be increasing frequency, and in turn capacity, on the following sectors:
- Johannesburg – Accra
- Johannesburg – Cape Town
- Johannesburg – Durban
- Johannesburg – Harare
- Johannesburg – Lusaka
- Johannesburg – Mauritius
- Johannesburg – Kinshasa
These increases in capacity and frequency are part of what the airline refers to as phase 2 of the post covid restart of operations. We’ll be keeping an eye open for any news or update coming from what once was arguably one of the largest airlines in the African continent.