Capacities at the Cape
Cape Town, the host of this year’s Fiata World Congress, is set to be re-connected nonstop to the USA again from 15 December. The skies in neighbouring countries are also full of good news. Here’s a brief overview – without making any claim for completeness.
United Airlines is adding nonstop flights between the USA and Cape Town, the first such offering since South African Airways terminated its services to and from Miami FL (USA) 20 years ago. It will operate thrice a week with Boeing B787-9s. RSA’s economic hub Johannesburg traditionally offers more long-haul options. In July Qatar Airways increased its Airbus A350 flights between Doha (Qatar) and JNB from 14 to 19 a week; it is also set to up links to and from Cape Town from seven to ten a week from the end of October.
The start of the winter schedule will see the airline add a premiere; three of its JNB services will continue to Gaborone (Botswana), which will make Qatar Airways the first non-African airline with scheduled services to and from Botswana. Windhoek, capital of neighbouring Namibia, is served by Qatar and KLM. The Dutch carrier also brought further maindeck capacities to the region in September when it added a Boeing B747F service to Lusaka (Zambia).
