SA Express Airlines to increase Zimbabwe flights frequency

SA Express Airlines to increase Zimbabwe flights frequency
Published: 04 July 2013
South Africa Express Airlines, which launched its Harare-Durban route in November last year, yesterday said it would increase its frequency on the route to four flights per week next month owing to increased response by the market.

In an interview yesterday, SA Express general manager Mr Brian van Wyk said the airline was currently transporting about 1 000 passengers between Harare and Durban per month.

"We are happy about the response. The route has done much more than we even expected ourselves, at about 1 000 passengers per month.

"We are introducing our fourth frequency in August. We are going to be doing Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

"We are not competing with Air Zimbabwe. We welcome them back but they are competing with our sister airline South African Airlines on the Harare-Johannesburg route, which we are not part of.

"We are doing the Harare-Durban route and we have done investigations into the Harare-Cape Town route, which we think is lucrative but we will soon announce our decision on it," said Mr van Wyk.

Zimbabwe, he said, had great business potential and that the country was leading all regional countries in online bookings.

"We have had an increase in online bookings and, guess what, Zimbabwe is leading all regional countries in online bookings.

"Online bookings stand at 18 percent and that is more than Botswana, Zambia and Namibia, among others. There is technology there!

"Zimbabwe is leading and travel agents must start smelling something here. Zimbabwe is the highest in online bookings, followed by Botswana, Namibia and then Zambia. We are looking for more routes and there is a big Zimbabwean community in Durban.

"There are workers, students and businesspeople on this route and want to connect them to the rest of South Africa and the world. There is a lot of tourism business in KwaZulu-Natal Province and we want to capitalise on that," said Mr van Wyk.

SA Express runs a fleet of 22 planes that ply regional routes and Mr van Wyk said the company had already started embarking on a multi-million dollar re-fleeting exercise.

"We have small aircraft but we have started a re-fleeting exercise, where we are dealing with the kind of planes we have, buying new ones and so forth. By 2014/2016 we should have done much in terms of re-fleeting in line with the changing global trends,'' he said.
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