by DION HENRICK in Cape Town
CAPE TOWN, (CAJ News) – SOME global airlines are planning to introduce, resume or expand flights to Cape Town this year.
This coincides with the city showing a promising return to pre-COVID passenger travel numbers.
Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape, confirmed the development.
Singapore Airlines is operating their Cape Town- Johannesburg-Singapore route daily.
Air Belgium plans to operate a seasonal route to Cape Town starting in September 2022, with two flights weekly.
Turkish Airlines recently launched their new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner to Cape Town, operating four times weekly.
Air Botswana will increase the frequencies on their Gaborone to the city to three times per week, starting April 28.
Emirates will increase its Cape Town-Dubai route to ten times per week from May 1.
United Airlines will operate their year-round Newark/ New York-Cape Town route starting June 5.
The United States-based airline has also applied to operate three flights per week from Washington to Cape Town.
Delta Airlines seeks to operate a year-round schedule with three flights per week from Atlanta to Cape Town, starting mid-November 2022, pending approval.
Germany’s Condor will resume operations of their Frankfurt-Cape Town route starting October 4.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is expanding frequencies on their Cape Town-Amsterdam route to six times per week and from July 11 will return to a daily service.
Wesgro noted the first quarter of 2022 has shown a promising return to pre-COVID passenger travel numbers to the “Mother City.”
March 2022 continued on the positive growth trend seen throughout 2021 and into the start of 2022.
As of March 31, 2022, international terminal numbers grew by 8 percent from February 2022, depicting an impressive 61 percent recovery with a total of 161 064 international passengers returning to Cape Town International Airport compared to the same period in 2019.
Domestic terminal numbers have also increased steadily.
Compared to the same period in 2019, the statistics for March 2022 show a total of 556 644 domestic passengers with a recovery rate of 72 percent.
Although March only depicts a 1 percent growth in passengers from February, this still equates to 94 425 additional passengers travelling through the domestic terminal.
This takes into account the grounding of Comair (British Airways and Kulula) which negatively affected the total passenger numbers.
– CAJ News