SAA dropping CPT-DUR - any ideas why?

[Globaliser]

It seems a bit odd that 5x daily SA A319s plus 2x daily JE 737s (on weekdays) will be collapsed into 4x daily JE 737s, with the business class cabin being abandoned altogether.

Is there more to this than meets the eye?

[evanb]

Easy, CPT-DUR is over traded resulting in very poor yields with almost zero connecting traffic supporting regional or international flights. They are reducing capacity and raising yields. Furthermore, the aircraft will be moved to regional routes with higher yields.

Nothing more ...

[Capetonian]

I thought it was pretty clear that JE (FlyMango) was an attempt by SAA to offload lower yield pax onto the subsidiary to free up the SAA fleet for higher yield business. From what I've seen it's been a succesful strategy and JE has worked well - I'm on them again next week.

[davidash]

If you have ever flown on the last CPT-Dur flight or the reverse, you will know that it is a disgrace! Those flights and the early morning flights are always completely full. The explanation is nonsense and if SAA wants to be the national flag carrier then it must service the route. There will be chaos and unhappiness from passengers. I for one, will not fly SAA anywhere any longer.
Unhappy Durbanite

[Capetonian]

You can FlyVrotMango. It's SAA with a different colour scheme!

[Ghost_Rider737]

SAA is expanding their African Route Network so they're freeing up Aircraft from less profitable routes. Im not saying DUR-CPT was not profitable im assuming they can make more cash in Africa than they can in SA's very competitive,over capitalised domestic market.

I was on a Mango Flight recently and according to their inflight magazine , they will have wireless internet available in the near future. Its not all doom and gloom for the businessman. I know it doesnt make up for legroom but at least its a service you wont find on SAA.

[evanb]

Davidash, the loadfactor means very little, its the yield that drives the profitability on the route. One needs to ask how heavily they are discounting tickets on the route to fill the aircraft. For instance, this is what Tuesday's (tomorrow's) flights are looking like:

Cheapest tickets:
CPT-DUR:
SA600 R650, SA606 R650, SA612 R650, SA616 R650, SA620 R2350
DUR-CPT:
SA601 R2350, SA607 R650, SA613 R650, SA617 R650, SA621 R1250

So the cheapest tickets are available on 80% of the flights one way, and 60% on the return, compare that to JNB-CPT (a flight of almost identical length) where the cheapest ticket is only available on 5 out of 21 flights one way, and 4 out of 21 on the return! What this means is that the DUR-CPT flights are yielding poorly.

Secondly, even if the early morning flights are full and yield a lot the route is not viable for one flight a day to a network carrier.

[groundfloor]

Hmmmm Ever heard that the customer is right? Is SAA going to carry on chasing after the cherries and dropping the bread and butter...There comes a time when a real BOSS is going to have to tell the beancounters to wind their necks in....

If you are a farmer and a field is not yielding do you just drop it...The SAA decision of choice is just that..When the going gets tough they get out and then, hey, someone else makes a go of it?

Still just shuffling the same amount of chess pieces around the board as 10 years ago .

[theBOSS]

You tell them Groundfloor!!!!!

[grjplanes]

So, now where to are these aircraft redeployed? It's only been announced to withdraw from CPT-DUR, but nothing about any new routes or significant increases on others...only a week away?

[evanb]

No announcements yet, but I would think increasing frequencies to Malawi (Lilongwe & Blantyre), Uganda (Kampala), Tanzania (Dar) and the DR Congo (Kinshasa), and maybe new routes to the Congo (Brazzaville).