SAA’s early flight cut to city a ‘blow for business’
SA AIRWAYS’ decision to cut back on its flights into and out of East London came into effect this week – a move which is widely believed will affect local business.
At the end of September, SAA announced it would cut one of its daily flights to East London and this week, travellers discovered it was the early morning flight to Johannesburg.
The earliest flight commuters can now get to Johannesburg, through this airline, is at 12.05pm (noon).
Founding member of the Black Business Forum Mtenza Buya said: “It used to be that we could go there [Johannesburg] for a day of meetings and fly back in the evening.” He was referring to the fact that the late evening flight from Johannesburg is now not available every day of the week.
“We will have to wait and see if any other airlines fill in the cut flights. We are hoping to engage with them on this matter,” said Buya.
Deidre Nxumalo Freeman, chairwoman of the East London branch of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa, said: “It increases the cost of doing business outside the province as this will now necessitate additional costs for accommodation to attend early morning meetings.”
Les Holbrook, executive director of the Border-Kei Chamber of Business, said: “Last week we met with the SAA group executive and they did advise they were doing this. They also said that they and SA Express may be returning the overnight flight to leave at 6.35am the next day.
“Dropping the flight is really bad for East London and all we can say is it’s spiteful of them to do this. We asked them not to drop East London in view of the fact that they run about 40 flights a day between Durban and Cape.
“It will now make it even more difficult for business people.
“At the meeting we did reject their turnaround proposal for domestic route’s simply because we and PE are the only domestic routes to be the sacrificial lambs.”
Independent airlines like Kulula and Safair currently offer early morning flights to Johannesburg from East London.