Don't have the figures in front of me, so must await Pontius' contribution with the exact numbers, but the A340-300 needs less than 20C or thereabouts to get out of JNB at anything approaching MTOW. However, departing at night to Europe (and I assume most of SAA's departures will fall into this category?), we can always depart with full pax, and a fair whack of freight. We often have to chuck some freight off if the wx at the other end is grotty, but I've never departed JNB for LHR with less than about 10 tons of freight, even on the hottest night and with the grottiest wx in LHR. And we've never ever left pax or bags behind (not for weight considerations anyway
). So unless Spoories are planning on daytime departures, they shouldn't have too many problems.
Deliveries. As far as I know the 300s are only scheduled for soemtime next year anyway - don't know what their status is. The -600s are late - we get the first 4, then I think CX gets 2 before SAA gets their 1st one, though I might be wrong. Anyway, no.4 was supposed to have been delivered about now, but we've only just taken delivery of no.3, which should have arrived in august!! So I suspect Spoories have a month or 2 to wait.
4HP - how you doing, bro'? Long time no hear - you heading this way at all?