General overview
South Africa is not a large country in world terms, with a population of only about 50 million people. Also, flying is not the most popular method of transport – roads are, and many people are simply unable to afford the cost of a plane ticket. For reasons such as these, air travel in South Africa is mostly limited to the major urban centers and there are not nearly as many flights as there are in the developed nations. All the major cities are linked by daily flights, but air tickets cannot compare favorably price-wise with modes of transport such as rail or bus. However, rail and bus may take more than ten times longer to make the same journey, and have a much poorer record of safety and adherence to schedule. As an example, the bus or train from Cape Town to Johannesburg takes about 24 hours. There are frequent bus accidents in South Africa and the train may or may not be delayed at some stage, typically in a nondescript location somewhere in the sparsely inhabited interior of the country. The plane, on the other hand, will take 2-3 hours to make the same journey, is far more comfortable, and if it is delayed you are still likely to arrive on the same day.
South African Airways plane.
The key domestic airline is South African Airways, which has traditionally enjoyed a monopoly in the market. Since the end of Apartheid, several new domestic carriers have opened for business and a couple of them have subsequently shut down again. At present, there are several:
- South African Airways
- Mango Air (flymango.com)
- kulula.com (Kulula Air)
- 1time
- BA Comair
- Velvet Sky
SAA is the longest-standing operator, going back to the 1930s. The others have all been established in the last 20 years, with SA Express conducting its first flight in the second half of 2011. In a time of rising fuel prices and marked urbanization, it remains to be seen to what extent air travel will become more accessible, both price-wise and culturally, to people in South Africa.
Other foreign international airlines also offer domestic flights, under the heading of “connecting flights”, but these flights may not be advertised as domestic since they may form part of a long-haul international flight (typically Cape Town to Johannesburg before leaving the country). If you are interested in taking a connecting flight on a favorite airline instead of using a domestic carrier then you are welcome to contact us so that we can source the cheapest ticket for you.
1time plane in red livery.
Cost of tickets
The price of domestic flight tickets in South Africa depends on:
- which airline the ticket is booked with
- how far in advance the passenger books
- how popular that specific flight is
- how many people are on the flight already
- how many airlines cover that route
- what seating/cabin class the ticket is
Generally, the older and international airline South African Airways charges more for domestic flights, but then it does not market itself as a low-cost carrier, and has a low-cost subsidiary in Mango Air. You mays find that SAA’s lower price range for domestic flights matches the upper price range of some of the low-cost carriers, but there is not fixed price for any of the airlines for a specific route.
kulula.com plane in informal green livery.
Booking in advance is important and can save you a lot of money. As the date of a flight approaches, the price of the tickets escalates. Try to prepare your itinerary with as much time to spare as possible so that you can secure your tickets well in advance of the date on which you intend to fly on them. If you require assistance in booking the tickets in advance, please contact us for professional advice and assistance.
The popularity of a flight depends mainly on two things – its time of day, and its destination. Air traffic also has a “rush hour”, and due to relatively lower domestic demand in South Africa flights during the day cost more than at other times. There are usually not any domestic flights in the small hours, so if you want to pay less for your ticket you should not try to book one during daylight hours, as a rule of thumb. This may make other transport arrangements such as airport taxis or buses harder to organize, so you need to weigh up the saving on the plane ticket against the potentially increased cost and/or inconvenience of other transport.
Velvet Sky plane.
The number of people who have already booked themselves on to the flight is beyond your control but in order to avoid the rush, once again, it pays to book early.
Not all of the domestic carriers in South Africa service all the major urban centers. If you are trying to fly to a lesser city such as Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Upington or Kimberley, you may find that the tickets cost far more than flight tickets for the equivalent or even longer distance to other cities such as Johannesburg or Cape Town. Keep in mind all the hours of travel that you are sparing yourself by taking a flight instead of using road or rail transport.
Seating class is not always an issue in determining the price of tickets on the domestic airlines. As is to be expected of a low-cost airline offering domestic flights, the emphasis of these carriers is not on providing expensive luxury to their passengers and they rather offer in-flight catering on a buy-on-board basis. The airlines’ justification for this system is that passengers who do not require food or drinks in-flight do not therefore cross-subsidize those who do by paying inflated ticket prices. On-board refreshments and meals may cost more than on the ground, though. Local flights in South Africa never last longer than about two hours so this is not a serious inconvenience, although some flights may be as long as three hours. If you do not want to buy food on the plane, you should either take your own food in your hand luggage or plan your daily meals around the flight schedule. There are also eating establishments at the airport.
Mango plane in the "mango peel" livery.
Other creature comforts are probably not going to be present in the plane either, depending on the airline, and some of the domestic airlines only have one seating class – economy. In their advertising, these airlines typically emphasize their fares because that is their main selling point. Flying is still very uncommon for many people in South Africa and as long as a domestic plane ticket remains out of their reach financially air travel is probably going to remain limited to a relatively small proportion of the population.
In order to fly with a domestic airline, you either need to book your ticket at an airport at which the airline has a ticket office, or on the internet. However, with some airlines booking on the internet flight booking process means that all you need to check in for your flight is your identity document. Alternatively, you can make use of us to do your booking, and enjoy the advantages of professional service and long industry experience, as well as after-sales service which you won’t get if you do the booking yourself.
Although tickets on some flights may sometimes be at bargain basement prices, the small fleets and limited route coverage of those airlines may make the tickets hard to get hold of. A small fleet also increases the chance of “bumping”, which is when you are placed on a later flight due to over-booking. As an example, Velvet Sky advertises itself as offering the lowest fares in the country, but when it started operating in 2009 it had only one plane.
Cape Town International Airport.
Safety
South African domestic airlines have a strong tradition of safe operation. There have been no accidents involving any of the domestic airlines, and only one in the last 40 years of international operations by SAA. That accident, in 1987, has given rise to the theory that it was caused by the clandestine transport of military cargo which ignited and damaged the structure of the plane. Subsequent attempts to investigate the accident have not produced an explanation which is to the satisfaction of all parties (no-one survived – the plane went down in the Indian Ocean). This crash is named after the Boeing 747 plane involved, the Helderberg, and occurred in 1987. It is a notorious incident in South Africa. There have been no accidents involving an SAA plane since then, and the latest one before that was in 1968.
Domestic flights in South Africa never last longer than about 3 hours, and there are airports throughout the country, so that if a plane were to experience mid-air difficulties, diversion of the flight and emergency landing would probably not be a problem. Even the longest domestic route, which is between Johannesburg and Cape Town, only takes 2-3 hours to fly, with the airport of Bloemfontein roughly halfway, so a plane on that route is never more than about an hour away from a major runway, and there are no extensive bodies of water in the country of South Africa either.
The high-speed Gautrain rail service.
Terrorism is not common in South Africa, and not on South African planes either. There has only been one successful hi-jacking, in 1972, but that flight was on its way out of the country and was therefore not a domestic flight. In terms of domestic flights, in 2006 a 21-year-old man from Zimbabwe attempted to hi-jack an SAA plane but was thwarted. The plane, which was flying from Cape Town Johannesburg, simply returned to Cape Town, and he was arrested. This emphasizes two things – the capacity of law enforcement authorities in South Africa to deal effectively what that kind of situation, and, once again, the fact that no plane on a domestic flight in South Africa is ever far away (in aviation terms) from a possible place to land, and also that domestic flights use relatively smaller planes which probably do not carry enough fuel to go very far beyond the borders of the country, so that it would make very little, if any, sense for a terrorist organization or even a lone extremist or deranged person to hi-jack a domestic flight in South Africa. The incident in 2006 is the only case of anyone ever trying to hi-jack a domestic flight in South Africa, and South Africa’s relatively lower profile internationally and lack of foreign enemies makes the country’s aviation industry unlikely to experience that kind of crime.
Obtaining a pilot’s license in South Africa is a properly regulated process and is also expensive. South African airports host many international airlines and the standard of service and safety is therefore of an international degree. Although other countries in Africa or Africa generally may have a poor reputation for aviation safety, South Africa does not share that reputation and you may take a flight on any local airline in South Africa without any apprehension.
