blog-SAA-Olympic-Plane

JOHANNESBURG. 25 May 2015. South African Airways (SAA), the leading carrier on the African continent and its feeder partner airline, Airlink, have entered into a joint commercial venture which as a first ever will offer scheduled air services at Tshwane City’s Wonderboom Airport.

Effective 16 August the service will operate between Wonderboom, and Cape Town, a key domestic route for the carriers. Wonderboom Airport has recently been upgraded and offers sophisticated facilities for an airline operator.

Airlink will operate the three times a day return air-service between the two cities using the SAA franchise intellectual property, including the SAA flight code (SA). Airlink and SAA have enjoyed a close working relationship for more than twenty years and Airlink has been operating as a franchisee of SAA since 1997.

“Connecting the two historically significant South African  cities, Pretoria, the capital city, with Cape Town, the mother city, is an exciting development on our domestic route network, which we believe will be popular with both leisure and business travelers,” says Nico Bezuidenhout, SAA Acting Chief Executive Officer.

“It is yet another way of enhancing our value proposition to our customers by providing more options which translate into convenient travel times from the airports of their choice,” he added.

“We are immensely excited by expanding our relationship with SAA, and with the opportunity to link our most important South African cities by air. This is a first for the country and we are pleased that our customers can benefit from this,” says Rodger Foster, Airlink CEO.

The metropolitan area of Tshwane houses approximately three million residents, and several thousand businesses located in multiple business commercial and industrial nodes.

“All businesses, industries and communities located in and around Tshwane will benefit from the new services. In particular, manufacturing sectors such as in the case of the automotive industry located within the catchment and various diplomatic missions and NGO’s located in the area, where there is a strong nexus with their counterparts on Cape Town will stand to benefit from air services at Wonderboom,” says Foster.