Four new destinations have been added by South African Airways, with service beginning at Chileka International Airport (BLZ) in Blantyre and Kamuzu International Airport (LLW) in Lilongwe, both in Malawi.
Additionally, the airline will provide service to Victoria Falls Airport (VFA) in Zimbabwe and Hosea Kutako International Airport (WDH) in Windhoek, Namibia. These routes were anticipated to launch prior to the start of the holiday season in December 2022.
The new routes were announced on November 2, 2022, along with the news that the airline would increase the frequency of some of its existing destinations. The number of weekly flights from South African Airways to Cape Town, Accra, Harare, Durban, Lusaka, Kinshasa, and Mauritius will rise. The new routes and higher flight frequencies are a cornerstone of the airline’s pandemic recovery strategy. They are the continuation of the airline’s “Post-COVID Restart Operation,” which was initiated more than a year ago.
According to airline executives, this new expansion demonstrates that the company is making headway with its recovery goals. John Lamola, the airline’s CEO and executive chairman, underlined how crucial the company is to the South African economy. He continued by saying that the new lines would have a positive impact on the local economy. Lamola affirmed.
The airline retains all historical route traffic rights even after voluntarily cancelling certain routes, according to the International Air Services Council (IASC). The airline will be able to reopen these services in the upcoming years with the ability to fly the routes it does not now operate. It intends to resume service on a number of regional routes that it formerly operated on in 2023. Additionally, it plans to open the first intercontinental route following the resumption in early 2023.
South African Airways has struggled to maintain current operations since it resumed operations more than a year ago. The airline lost the privileges to 20 foreign destinations in late September. The airline stopped operating to these destinations in March 2020. The IASC found that the airline lacked the resources to operate these routes. Other airlines can now fill this demand thanks to the decision to remove the airline’s 20 foreign licenses. There was a huge void in the African international air transit market as a result, and the South African airline was left with only 32 foreign destinations it could serve.
After extensive debate between the parties, the IASC recently announced that the airline has been awarded the rights to these routes once again. According to South African Airways, the shortage of finance during the pandemic and business restructuring caused the routes to be unserviced. It informed the IASC that many of these routes will soon be restarted as it restored its global network in accordance with its recovery plans.
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