SAA take off wit arrival of A330-300s

SAA has taken delivery of three
new Airbus A330-300s in the
past two months and the trade
sees it as a positive step for the
airline.
Lydia Norval, travel operations
director of Reynolds Travel Centre,
says the new aircraft will do
wonders for the airline. She says
SAA’s current fleet is old and this
puts people off travelling with them.
“From a traveller’s point of view,
it is encouraging to see fresh
equipment,” says Marco Ciocchetti,
ceo of XL Travel group. “Some
travellers, especially business-class
travellers, were starting to moan.”
According to Rodger Foster,
ceo of Airlink, this is the best
available outcome the airline could
have achieved following SAA’s
restructuring of a 2002 Airbus
deal that included the purchase of
15 A320s and was subsequently
increased to 20 in 2009.
By 2014, SAA had received 10 of
the 20 aircraft. Rodger says that,
without the restructuring, by the
time the remaining A320s would
have arrived, the airline would have
paid a lot of money for old aircraft.
Instead, SAA entered into an
agreement with Airbus to lease five
new A330s.
The remaining two are scheduled
for delivery in March and May.
The 249-seat A330-300 is
configured with 203 seats in
economy class and 46 in business,
more business-class seats than
the largest aircraft in SAA’s current
fleet, the A340-600, which has 42
seats. This comes as great news
for agents like Maro Kyprianides of
Tour Destinations International, who
told TNW that there were sometimes
not enough business-class seats
available to passengers on SAA’s
international routes.
SAA spokesperson, Tlali Tlali,
told TNW that an added benefit
was that the fuel consumption and
operating costs on the A330s were
significantly less than on the A340.
Busi Nhlapo, md of Destination
Express, says a facelift is great,
but SAA’s airfares have gone up too
much, putting her off booking with
the airline. “The payment for the
aircraft is going to be coming from
our clients and that’s going to make
it difficult for us to make a profit,
because the airfare alone is already
exorbitant.”
According to Tlali, the three
new aircraft will operate on SAA’s
Johannesburg-Lagos, JohannesburgSão
Paulo, and Johannesburg-AccraWashington
services. Depending
on demand, SAA will also deploy
an A330 on its Johannesburg-Cape
Town route.