South African Pulls The Pin On Capetown-London

[Grahame Hutchison]

From CAPA ..

Cyclical downturns can disproportionately affect end of line carriers since they have few opportunities to pull traffic for long-haul flights, as has been seen with Qantas and to a lesser extent Air New Zealand. But now South African Airways (SAA) is feeling the pinch and will end from 16-Aug-2012 its London Heathrow-Cape Town service after over two decades of operation.
As with Air New Zealand and Qantas redistributing some capacity from competitive intercontinental routes to less competitive and higher-yielding regional markets, SAA intends to expand capacity to the healthy west African markets of Abidjan, Accra and Lagos as well as open longer routes to the healthier markets of Mumbai and Perth.
SAA has not previously encountered challenges the way ANZ and Qantas have, a result of South Africa taking a more restrictive approach to air service agreements, SAA can fly non-stop to key markets and there is limited sixth freedom competition from other African carriers.

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