After months of suspending South African operations, Emirates has resumed flights to the country this month. And, in just a few weeks of restarting operations, Emirates is on a mission to offer seamless connections throughout the country.
The airline has revealed that it signed an interline agreement with Cemair that opens up connections to six more destinations in South Africa, including a few leisure points exclusively served by Cemair.
This is Emirates’ fourth airline partnership in South Africa. The arrangement between Emirates and Cemair includes the convenience of single ticket itineraries, with onwards booking and baggage transfers from Johannesburg and Cape Town to Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Margate, Durban, Hoedspruit, Plettenberg Bay, George and Sishen.
Adnan Kazim, chief commercial officer at Emirates, said the new Cemair links provide customers with more possibilities to travel smoothly across many of South Africa’s most popular leisure points.
"Connecting our networks solidifies our commitment to offering our customers even more travel opportunities, especially for those wanting to experience South Africa’s existing favourites, as well as travellers plotting new itineraries. We look forward to working together and strengthening our relationship," said Kazim.
Miles van der Molen, chief executive of Cemair, said the interline agreement provides their customers with convenience and savings.
“They can now seamlessly connect from our flights to the vast global network of this iconic airline. As we continue our expansion during the post-Covid recovery period, we realise that now more than ever partnerships are key to our success. Working with market leaders like Emirates Airline is a further demonstration of our commitment to our customers to provide the best service and value,” he said.
Emirates also announced a unilateral codeshare agreement with Airlink that allows travellers access to Airlink’s network of more than 40 domestic and regional destinations across 12 African countries.
“The extended codeshare provides connectivity to Airlink and Emirates customers not offered by any other carrier in Africa and augments the long-standing partnership that Emirates has with SAA,” the airlines said in a statement.
The connectivity provided by the new codeshare between Emirates and Airlink will offer competitive fares, combined ticketing and seamless baggage transfers when connecting between both airlines.