All the bubbly has been drunk and the pretty girls wearing the new uniforms have gone home, its now time to make some money. There has been the expected response form the other LCC’s which is exactly what was planned for- they have been trying to soak up demand in the market with specials over the last few months in expectation of the launch but I think the guys really gave them a bit of a shock with the launch offer. The primary effect of this is that their counter is just a show- these specials have dried up all of their available inventory of the launch period so they have a handful of seats available to counter- who is talking misleading advertising now??? Its now time to see who are the real LCC’s in the market, all the prices are inclusive and there are lots of seats available- no seats are limited and the price will go up as they are sold BS that one of the “other” LCC’s spouts.
Mango is born, its up to the team to take it forward to the next level- of which I’m absolutely convinced they will- especially given the amount of money they have already generated, the market is hungry and they don’t care who they travel on if the price is right….
Originally Posted by
George Tower
I for one will be very interested to see how the SAA brand develops. It has got to be one of the strongest brands in SA, and yet it just seems to take hit after hit. Mango looks as if it could be a strong brand, but there is more to branding than orange aircraft.......but with the whole SAA operation now linked so closely to Mango, what does SAA stand for, what are we getting from them, who are they etc........
FF, I just want to counter your invective by suggesting to you that the logical outcome of your statement is 1. Job losses for pilots and other staff, 2. higher prices for consumers in the long run as a state owned/state run insolvent loss maker seeks to be a monopoloy.
GT, the launch of Mango was the first step in SAA’s repositioning- no sense charging off into the sunset offering cut price tickets to the bucket and spade brigade with our cost structure, remember SAA is the only true network carrier in this market (as I’ve stated before even BA use our network more then they use Comair for feed as we use theirs etc) this positioning has never really been leveraged because of the preoccupation of keeping market share domestically. This leads me onto the whole debate about job cuts and down sizing – at this point in time we have INCREASED capacity domestically, regionally and internationally- the reason is simple, for example there is no way you are going to beat the Desert Carriers to Europe, the middle east and India on price- where you can get them is generating more feed for your network thus forcing them to source all their traffic in the centres they fly to. You cant leverage your network if its full of VFR’s you need capacity to play this game- this works for outbound as well as inbound. Essentially we would rather sell a cheap seat (and in some cases if they buy a high enough fare class on the long haul- we kick in the domestic FOC) to a person connecting onto a long haul flight than sell it to a point to point domestic leisure passenger. Of course that not going to be the total plan we still have a very strong corporate market which is key – they are also going to benefit from this. Coupled to all this is a new distribution strategy that will cut our distribution costs massively- savings we intend passing onto the customer base.
Do not see any difference between that and the "Price Fixing" that was done between Kulula and 1Time until the arrival of Mango.
LCC's in SA were definitely not cheap, until 2 days ago.
What all this will mean is more cheap flights for the locals, cost reductions for corporates coupled to a more focussed route network and more inbound tourists form the key markets. Seems like a plan to me!
Fluffy, it all looks bright orange!! And it looks good!