South African Airways To Go Daily From Mumbai

Raadia Mukadam - Mumbai

In a bid to augment the existent Indian traffic to South Africa, South African Airways (SAA) is set to initiate daily flights from Mumbai along with launching two new hubs in the country, within the next six months. Announcing this intent Nalini Gupta, general manager, South African Airways, said, “There has been a huge increase in traffic to South Africa, not only from the leisure segment but essentially from the corporate sector which is by far more sustainable. SAA is thus very buoyant about the Indian route and wants to deploy fleets to capitalise on this market.”

Elucidating the rapid increase in corporate traffic Gupta explains that, “It is the two country concept that has worked for SAA. Several corporates heading to South America are flying SAA, we are thus benefiting from business opportunities in South America that Indians are exploring. Despite the airline having four weekly flights from Mumbai, the demand still supersedes the supply. In view of the current scenario, we plan to increase our flights by introducing daily flights from Mumbai as well as initiating operations from Delhi. Later we may consider a third hub in a metro in South India, since it holds a lot of tourist potential.”

When asked whether SAA has been able to fill up the recently introduced Airbus, deployed on all ex-Mumbai routes, increasing its seat capacity by 32 per cent, a jubilant Gupta replies, “Despite the additional seat capacity, I can still not do justice to the increasing demand that far exceeds the supply. My challenge in the near future however will be to fill up the Airbus on a daily operation from Mumbai,” she claims.

Recognising the importance of India as a huge business opportunity, Gupta also revealed that SAA is partnering with SATOUR in their forthcoming marketing campaign which will hit the media in early 2004. Will the industry witness cheaper fares with additional flights? “No, we are sitting on a monopoly situation where the growth of the market far exceeds the seat capacity, therefore we feel no need to go cheap”.