Lufthansa’s decision to route its seasonal flight to Cape Town from Munich instead of Frankfurt from October should please tourists in both directions, particularly the growing number of South Africans interested in winter sport.
But business travellers who live in Cape Town and welcomed the opportunity to fly directly to Frankfurt from here in summer instead of via Joburg are likely to be less happy.
Frankfurt is one of Europe’s main business destinations and, for years, Capetonians had a choice of flying there with either Lufthansa or SAA all year round.
Lufthansa was the first to withdraw after the arrival of Qatar Airways – the first Middle Eastern airline to fly to Cape Town, offering cheaper indirect flights by way of Doha in comfortable new aircraft. It was mostly tourists they attracted, but their arrival weakened the total market for direct flights to Germany from here to such an extent that we lost our Lufthansa service.
However, SAA’s service satisfied the city’s business travellers.
But then SAA also withdrew its Cape Town-Frankfurt service in line with a decision to develop Joburg as its hub for international flights and many readers complained about it.
But not as many as when SAA decided recently to withdraw its flights from here to London next month, sparking fears that it would harm our tourism industry, since Britain is still our main source market.
To counter the criticism, SAA commercial manager Theunis Potgieter led an SAA delegation to talk to our tourism authorities and representatives of the industry and local government last week.
He explained that using SAA’s limited fleet to open and grow new markets would benefit the Western Cape more than if SAA continued to compete with the growing number of foreign airlines bringing tourists here and – of course – offering us a wider choice of direct flights to their own countries, including France, Switzerland and Eritrea.
Deon Cloete, the general manager of Cape Town Airport and his team, and the provincial government are hoping to attract more airlines to provide direct flights.
Routes
European countries are, of course, eager to attract more visitors from outside the continent and with airlines facing a drop in demand on some of their existing routes and growing interest in Africa, let’s hope we shall, in fact, see more flights arriving here.
Let’s hope. too, that the euro zone troubles and the falling off in visitors to Britain after the Olympics may cause the British and EU governments to reduce or abolish the taxes they have imposed on incoming travellers and airlines, ostensibly to help protect the environment but in fact to bolster their own incomes.
The International Air Transport Association has urged them to stop taking individual action and, instead, support the airline industry in acting together – very effectively – to find ways to reduce its emissions of polluting CO2.
Environment
Low cost airline 1Time has formed a partnership with social enterprise company Green Pop, to support environmental awareness and sustainable development in southern Africa. Plans include flying up to 10 000 trees to Zambia which has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
Blacky Komani, chief executive of 1Time, says the partnership is in line with the airline’s commitment to reducing its own carbon footprint.
According to Lauren O’Donnell, one of the founders of Green Pop, 1Time is providing a flexible and supportive approach and Green Pop now has the transport resources to reach its project in Zambia and engage with local partners.
She said they were now in discussions that could lead to 1Time passengers being invited to offset their carbon footprints by having a tree planted on their behalf.
Green Pop runs urban and reforestation projects in sub-Saharan Africa, planting trees at schools, in towns and in deforested areas. - Weekend Argus