South African Airways (SAA) will inaugurate flights between Johannesburg and Beijing at the end of January 2012, around four months later than previously planned due to delays securing the necessary slots at Capital International Airport in the Chinese city. The airline had previously revealed a tentative September 1 launch date for the flight but ran into problems getting the required slots in Beijing.
“We were initially offered slots that would have meant departing Johannesburg in the mid-afternoon and that simply wasn’t an option,” Keith Green, Manager: Network Planning – Africa & South Africa, South African Airways, told The HUB at the Routes Africa air service forum in Bamako, Mali earlier this year.
SAA will offer a three times weekly service, with the plan to increase capacity to a daily service in the future as demand grows. It will use a three-class 379-seat Airbus A340-600 on the route but may reduce capacity to the A330 if frequencies increase. There is growing trade between Africa and China with much stronger investment in the continent by Chinese businesses.
“China’s investment in Africa over recent years is clear,” said Mark Clarkson, Vice President of Consultancy Services at Airport Strategy and Marketing (ASM). “The average annual growth rate of China-Africa trade between 2000 and 2008 was 33.5 per cent and although volumes dropped to US$91 billion in 2009 as a result of the international financial crisis, China became Africa's largest trade partner that year for the first time. The following year witnessed strong growth and in the first eleven months of 2010 trade reached US$115 billion, a year-on-year growth of 43.5 per cent.”
China’s investment in Africa has largely targeted the oil, gas and mining industries but is expanding into manufacturing, real estate, infrastructure and other sectors such as finance and the country has established special economic zones across the continent to support its focus. Such investment naturally brings air service opportunities.
However, airlines like SAA have lost out to the Gulf carriers who have been the main beneficiaries of the lack of non-stop services between China and Africa, with Emirates having a 26.8 per cent share of the estimated 1.1 million passengers, Qatar Airways has an expanding 11.9 per cent share and EgyptAir a 9.5 per cent share. Ethiopian Airlines is the largest African carrier in the market with a 20.5 per cent share of the traffic due to its recent expansion in China.
There is clear demand for a service between South Africa to China with an estimated 130,000 O&D passengers travelling between the two countries in the past year, up 0.4 per cent on the previous 12 month period. Around 32,000 O&D passengers travelled directly between Johannesburg and Beijing with the main traffic flows being with Emirates Airline via Dubai (43 per cent) and Cathay Pacific Airways via Hong Kong (32 per cent). But, the success of this route will not be just down to point-to-point traffic but the onward links Star Alliance partner Air China can offer across the country and wider Asian market and SAA’s own extensive local, regional and African network.
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