ZSSNC From Germany, joined Feb 2003, 428 posts, RR: 10 Posted (8 years 10 months 2 weeks 13 hours ago) and read 1985 times:
Effective 16th February 2005 SAA will start serving AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA/CPT daily using the A340-600. The service will be year round.
Since both flights (AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA/JNB and AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA/CPT) are nightflights in both directions consequently 4 A340-600s will be utilized on the AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA routes from that point on which brings me to my question: Which route will the A340-600 be axed from? With just 7 A340-600s in the fleet, either HKG or ATL will have to be axed equipment wise.
ZSSNC
Airbus A340-600 - the longest temptation in the sky
HB-IWC From Greece, joined Sep 2000, 4414 posts, RR: 76 Reply 3, posted (8 years 10 months 2 weeks 3 hours ago) and read 1844 times:
Has the route proven to be such a success or is this pure retaliation to Lufthansa's announcement of daily non-stop A343 service on the route, which in itself was answer to SAA's planned thrice weekly A342 service, that had already been upgraded to A346. How's the relationship between the two airlines?
ZSSNC From Germany, joined Feb 2003, 428 posts, RR: 10 Reply 4, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 6 days 21 hours ago) and read 1802 times:
HB-IWC,
no, this is not a retaliation to LH's announcement to introduce a daily nonstop service. SAA had planned this all along. Also, it was quite logical that SAA would do it. With just three weekly services versus seven of your competitor you can only lose. And either you win or you lose. And I'm pretty sure that SAA is determined to win.
ZSSNC
Airbus A340-600 - the longest temptation in the sky
FraT From Germany, joined Sep 2003, 1101 posts, RR: 1 Reply 5, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 6 days 21 hours ago) and read 1780 times:
Now that SA is in the Star Alliance why should they continue to fly to a Skyteam hub?
But LH/SA will have to fill quite a lot of seats the upcoming (European) winter. Good times for non-revers....
ZSSNC From Germany, joined Feb 2003, 428 posts, RR: 10 Reply 7, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 6 days 19 hours ago) and read 1732 times:
FraT,
SAA is not in Star Alliance yet! However, I agree with you about what you said about CDG. I personally think that if CDG cannot support a daily flight it will be axed.
Frank, HKG is something different. SAA made it a precondition for joining Star Alliance that it would be able to keep the current codeshare agreements with CX and QF.
ZSSNC
Airbus A340-600 - the longest temptation in the sky
SA7700 From South Africa, joined Dec 2003, 2916 posts, RR: 20 Reply 8, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 6 days 15 hours ago) and read 1687 times:
AIRLINERS.NET CREW HEAD MODERATOR
ZSSNC
Yet Jaan Albrecht, from Star Alliance, made it clear that SA has to relinquish it's codeshare agreements with QF and CX..... I still don't get it. QF can codeshare with OZ on the SYD-INC-SYD route. Maybe it's because OZ is the operating carrier?!
Shankly From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2000, 1472 posts, RR: 1 Reply 10, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 16 hours ago) and read 1601 times:
FraT, not sure I agree
I'm flying LHR-AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA-CPT with LH (the last leg now direct and not via Joberg!) in Dec/Jan and most flights are sold out already.
There is clearly scope for some extra capacity here.
Venezuela747 From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 1407 posts, RR: 5 Reply 11, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 13 hours ago) and read 1548 times:
I heard SAA was discontinuing ATL and moving to DC. Can anyone confirm that?
Andz From South Africa, joined Feb 2004, 8298 posts, RR: 11 Reply 12, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 1531 times:
Venezuela747
This is the plan IF the Star Alliance membership goes through.
South Africa has to be the hottest destination for German tourists right now, never mind the close business links the two countries have. I have flown between SA and Germany many times non-rev and it can be a bitch to get a seat, in summer season here you hear more German than English in Cape Town! I remember when the SA routing was AB) (FRA / FRF / EDDF), Germany">FRA-JNB-CPT and most of the German pax stayed on in JNB so this makes absolute sense. Neither SA nor LH will have any trouble filling the seats.
After Monday and Tuesday even the calendar says WTF...
JoFMO From Germany, joined Jul 2004, 2211 posts, RR: 0 Reply 13, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 1525 times:
@Andz
why do you type IF?
Do you see any serious problems for their star membership?
It was anonymously approved by all members, so I couldn't see any problems for them to be integrated in star like every other airline did before after 6-12 months.
FraT From Germany, joined Sep 2003, 1101 posts, RR: 1 Reply 15, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 1519 times:
Leskova,
HKG and SA - Georgia">ATL are hard to compare. HKG has a lot of O/D traffic whereas SA - Georgia">ATL is mostly connex travel. It is not important if SA's passenger arrive in SA - Georgia">ATL or SA - Virginia">IAD, as long as they have the right codeshare partner. And it looks like that will be UA and US in the near future.
You guys are right that both LH and SA will fill their seats in the (European)winter season. But will they continue to have all these seats next summer? It seams that North America is becoming really popular again with Germans after the dismal summer 2003. South Africa was the big winner last year when people were afraid to fly to North America because of SARS and the Iraq war.
Leskova From Germany, joined Oct 2003, 6075 posts, RR: 72 Reply 17, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 1507 times:
FraT, you're right about Atlanta being much more an airport used for connections than Hong Kong is, although I doubt that CX's connections hurt SAA in Asia...
But is Hong Kong to South Africa really that much of an O/D market? I was always under the impression that HKG was mainly on SAA's route map because of business connections, not because of tourist travel.
As for filling the seats between Frankfurt and South Africa - even if the demand does go down a bit, which remains to be seen, I doubt that LH and SA will really have trouble filling the seats: while working for a tour operator sending tourists from Germany to South Africa we at some point almost even stopped checking SA and LH, because we knew they'd be fully booked - and that sometimes included low seasons: the result was that we sent passengers through CDG, LHR, ZRH and AMS - whenever something was available on those routes (which, often enough, was as problematic as the routes from Frankfurt): only when SAA gave us permission to use the ZRH and CDG flights (and an occasional authorisation to put someone on an LHR fligh - later on we got rates that included LHR as well) did we actually start actively checking them again, because those routes usually had some capacities left while Frankfurt was already hopelessly overbooked.
Andz, the glitch is in the a.net database - unfortunately, the site creates a recursive acronym tag in the case of Frankfurt (and a few other airports that are also used as "Airbase" - the word Airbase is abbreviated as "AB", which the programming behind a.net then tries to interpret as the 2-letter-code for Air Berlin)... which, unfortunately, creates that unreadable output.
SAA201 From South Africa, joined May 2001, 505 posts, RR: 2 Reply 18, posted (8 years 10 months 1 week 4 days 19 hours ago) and read 1438 times:
To half answer the original question in this topic, I notice that when SAA starts the initial service with A346's from FACT-EDDF the aircraft will be taken from the CDG route. A342's will therefore serve JNB-CDG from 5 Oct.
Perhaps the increase to daily service of SA262 follows the delivery of the airline's 8th A340-600????
Sponsor Message: 
From Germany, joined Feb 2003, 428 posts, 
From Sweden, joined Jan 2001, 31119 posts, 
From , joined Dec 1969, posts, 
From Greece, joined Sep 2000, 4414 posts, 
From South Africa, joined Dec 2003, 2916 posts, 
From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2000, 1472 posts, 
Printer friendly format 
