Flyafrica.com has revealed more details of its plans to introduce a tourist route from Cape Town to Victoria Falls and on to Kilimanjaro.
The airline plans to have the route up and running before the end of the year. Once discussions with Tanzanian authorities are complete, flyafrica will be able to launch the tourist route, says Adrian Hamilton-Manns, ceo of the flyafrica group. “It is something we are very much committed to.”
Already operational, flyafrica Zimbabwe flies from Harare to Johannesburg daily and Harare-Victoria Falls and Victoria Falls-Johannesburg, both four times a week. Flights to Victoria Falls from Johannesburg will increase to daily on July 1.
This is just one of the many developments the airline group will see in 2015, Hamilton-Manns told Tourism Update.
Sales opened in October for the group’s second airline, flyafrica Namibia, which will offer daily flights between JNB and Windhoek, Windhoek and Cape Town and JNB and Lusaka, commencing in March.
Flyafrica Namibia will launch flights from Johannesburg to Lusaka through fifth freedom rights.
Fifth freedom rights allows an airline to carry passengers from its base country (i.e. Namibia) to a second country (i.e. South Africa), and from that country to a third (i.e. Zambia), where tickets can be sold on any sector.
“Johannesburg to Lusaka will be the first of many routes where flyafrica does not have an Air Operator Certificate in the country but by using fifth freedom rights that we can now exercise,” said Hamilton-Manns.
Fifth freedom rights will also allow flyafrica to build its hub operation out of Harare with flights to Lusaka, Mozambique and into neighbouring countries such as Malawi.
Further expansion is planned with the launch of two more airlines in the first half of this year. With four airlines, the group’s operations will increase to 16 routes. In the second half of 2015 and early 2016, flyafrica plans to launch three more airlines, bringing the total number in the group to seven.
Plans to launch a South African operation are on the cards. Due to opposition from established South African carriers, Hamilton-Manns is unable to provide a set date for when this will happen but expects it to be by the end of the year.
“At the moment we’ve put in our application with the Air Licensing Council to be awarded an Air Service Permit to operate in South Africa and that is in the stages of being reviewed,” Hamilton- Mann said. “The South African airline will be in place sometime this year, unless the objections are such that we are unable to make progress. If that is the case then we will be bringing low fares to the rest of Africa and South Africans will be left out.”
