{{South African Airways\u2019 (SAA\u2019s) January 17 departed from Johannesburg\u2019s OR Tambo International Airport to mark the first flight to Rwanda. The same flight was opened in Bujumbura the capital city of Burundi.}}<\/p>\n
According to the company the Rwanda and Burundi flights would commence from Johannesburg to Kigali and onwards to Bujumbura, while the return flights would operate from Bujumbura back to Kigali and then to Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
The company also said the two cites had been chosen, owing to their economic prominence. In addition to being the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali is also its economic, cultural and tourist transit hub. Meanwhile, Bujumbura capital is close to the country\u2019s main shipping port.<\/p>\n
SAA flights to East African countries are part of its Africa expansion program that includes the addition of four new services before its financial year-end in March, the company had added Burundi\u2019s city of Bujumbura and Rwanda\u2019s Kigali to its African route network.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is still early days, however, we have a reasonable load factor for our first flights,\u201d SAA commercial GMTheunis Potgieter said.<\/p>\n
He added that although it would take time to gain users\u2019 confidence in the new services, the airline expected it to achieve the same success as that of its service to the mining town of Ndola, in the Copperbelt, which opened in October.<\/p>\n
Attributing the success of the Ndola operation to Zambia\u2019s blossoming copper mining sector, Potgieter stated: \u201cWe are happy with how our services have been doing in Ndola. We have been flying with between 80% and 90% load factors on all the flights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Potgieter added that SAA had traffic rights between the Bujumbura and Kigali operations, which would also allow it to pick up passengers between the two destinations.<\/p>\n
He further remarked that SAA also planned to add routes to Pointe Noire, in the Republic of Congo, which was set to start operation on January 26, as well as the city of Cotonou, in Benin.<\/p>\n
Although SAA had yet to announce a launch date for the Cotonou route, Potgieter said it was hoping to get it started before the end of the current financial year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Africa holds significant potential with regard to identifying new service destinations. Analysis work is currently under way to determine possibilities of additional services in the Congo, and has identified the Ivory Coast as a possible new destination,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The objective behind the new services to the additional African destinations was not only to connect the respective countries with the South African market and visa versa, but also to other African and overseas markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that our African expansion program has come at the right time, especially when taking into account the significant growth in mining in Africa. In identifying potential service destinations it is therefore important for us to understand where mining operations in Africa are located and to be able to provide them with a quality service that is on time and operationally effective,\u201d Potgieter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{South African Airways\u2019 (SAA\u2019s) January 17 departed from Johannesburg\u2019s OR Tambo International Airport to mark the first flight to Rwanda. The same flight was opened in Bujumbura the capital city of Burundi.}} According to the company the Rwanda and Burundi flights would commence from Johannesburg to Kigali and onwards to Bujumbura, while the return flights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[158],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-b_igi_adm1n"],"bylines":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"contributors":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}