SAA hopes to restart long-haul flights from Cape Town soon

South African Airways (SAA) wants to resume long-haul flights soon, hopefully before the end of the current financial year.

SAA has sight set on international routes

With its current restart procedure going smoothly, South African Airways has stated that they would love to resume long-haul flight services soon.

As per travel news, Tebogo Tsimane, the interim Chief Commercial Officer at SAA, said last week that the onboarding of SAA’s new 51% shareholder, Takatso, was the priority and that the deal was in its final stages.

Tsimane also said that all future route development plans would be handled sensibly before the end of March 2023, the current financial year end. By then, the airline hopes to have at least opened new domestic and regional routes and, depending on the aircraft situation, to have restarted one or two long-haul flights.

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Where to?

Tsimane said that the airline is currently eyeing routes to New York, São Paulo and at least one Australian city from the Cape Town hub. Johannesburg to Perth and Johannesburg to Washington via Accra are also some of the most desired international routes featuring on SAA’s restart plan.

“There are a significant number of regional destinations that are in the plan for this financial year. And our restart story is also not complete until we go long haul,” Tsimane said.

“We definitely need to go back to Washington. That was a very successful route for us, via Accra. New York was also particularly successful, and from Cape Town we are able to overcome the challenge of Johannesburg’s hot and high conditions. We could see New York by flying out of Cape Town or Jo’burg, or a combination of both.” he added.

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