Seizing a gap in the regional market while SAA and other players are out of the picture, CemAir launched its first regional scheduled flight today, Tuesday, March 23, between Johannesburg’s OR Tambo and Luanda, Angola. It has ambitions for many more regional routes.
5Z4018 is currently scheduled to depart JNB at 08h00 on Tuesdays, arriving in Luanda at 10h30. Return flight 5Z4019 is scheduled to depart from Luanda at 11h00 arriving in JNB at 15h30.
Ceo, Miles van der Molen, said while CemAir had been awarded rights to fly to Luanda daily, Angolan COVID-19 restrictions were only permitting the airline to operate the flight once a week for the time being. However, he expects the schedule to increase in future.
CemAir has been working actively to get this route up and running since it received traffic rights in December. Initially, it will operate the popular direct route as a monopoly, as SAA is only expected to resume international flights in October and TAAG Angola Airlines is expected to return to South Africa only during April.
Miles said the Luanda route was predominantly a corporate, essential travel route that tended to have more resilient demand than other sectors of the market. He said Luanda was a stronghold for the oil and gas sector and the diamond mining industry and thus attracted a lot of South African business travellers. There is also a fair amount of inbound shopping traffic on the route, as Johannesburg is popular with Angolans needing to pick up supplies.
Late last year, Travel News reported that CemAir had applied to operate flights to Lagos, Luanda, Lusaka, Ndola, Lubumbashi, Dar es Salaam, Maputo and Accra. The airline also confirmed that it had applied for rights to operate to Gaborone, Maun and Kasane, and was waiting for the designation from the Botswana side to begin operations.
Miles now anticipates that the paperwork should soon be finalised to allow CemAir to launch its Maputo, Ndola and Lusaka routes. It has now also received its designation letters for Botswana but is still waiting for feedback on the Lagos route.
Miles also confirmed that CemAir had applied for rights to fly between Johannesburg and Pointe Noire, Brazzaville, Libreville, Nairobi, Entebbe and Freetown.
