South Africa Again Crowded with LCCs

South Africa’s low-cost airline sector is again getting crowded as new entrants such as FlySafair and Skywise squeeze the margins of incumbents—British Airways/Comair-owed Kulula and South African Airways subsidiary Mango. The latter two enjoyed market exclusivity for almost three years after Velvet Sky and 1time collapsed in 2012.

Despite recently falling fares, air service for many South Africans remains out of reach, as the minority white population continues to dwindle and a scarcity of jobs results from what the ruling ANC-led government officially labels “Black Empowerment” favored in the U.S. and elsewhere.

However, for visitors from outside, the weak Rand (the U.S. dollar currently buys about 12) has made traveling around the country quite affordable. A one-way trip between most city pairs typically costs about $80, making South Africa an exceptionally cheap tourist destination at present.

When AIN visited during the first week of March, flying Kulula from Johannesburg to George on the south coast, then FlySafair to Cape Town and back up to Johannesburg Lanseria Airport on Mango, healthy load factors reflected the equally healthy tourism sector.

Lanseria, to the northwest of Johannesburg, has turned from a sleepy general aviation airport into a main LCC hub for the African continent’s largest city, where both Kulula and Mango maintain regular operations. SAA also projects a presence at Lanseria, although it maintains its main base at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport. For international travelers coming from or going beyond southern Africa traveling via Tambo makes far more sense; ground travel to Lanseria can prove difficult, even with the new Guatrain mass transit rails system to Sandton and Pretoria helping the case.

South African Airways continues to struggle with huge losses and maintains a bloated workforce, and while its Airbus A340s look out of place against all the A380s now flying in, so too do the Embraer ERJ145s of SAA Express look rather forlorn against the LCC onslaught, particularly now that Skywise has also joined the flagship Johannesburg to Cape Town route.

More airlines lie in wait, too—most notably Fastjet, which continues to maintain its main hub at Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. With all the new competition, however, it might find tough going when it finally gets permission to fly South African domestic routes it so covets.