Johannesburg - International airline Emirates recently announced the ramp-up of services to its three gateways in South Africa, Joburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Emirates Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations Africa, Badr Abbas told the media in a round-table discussion on Tuesday that the ramp-up was part of Emirates’ ongoing commitment to support South Africa’s economic and tourism recovery to enhance connectivity across all of its gateways.

“Our ramp-up reaffirms South Africa’s strategic importance on our network, and we prioritise service expansion and rebuilding our capacity in this market to unlock further growth potential,” Abbas said.

The airline said to further reaffirm South Africa’s strategic importance in its network, Emirates would be increasing its flight schedule to South Africa from January 1, for Cape and March 1, for Joburg, with Durban benefiting even sooner, with daily flights starting before the end of the year from December 1.

“This reintroduction of these new flights between Dubai and the three gateways in South Africa will enhance our schedule to a 42 weekly service versus 49 flights we had weekly pre-pandemic,” the senior vice-president said.

Abbas added that Emirates was hopeful that by May 2023, the airline will be able to bring back all 14 flights, subject to market demand and its operational capability.

According to the airline, it is seeing healthy flows of South African customers in and out of points in Europe, Middle East, Indian subcontinent and growing traffic points in the US.

“South Africans are travelling to the UK, Germany, Turkey, India, Thailand, the US, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. These are our top destinations. Dubai is our number one destination and we are seeing an increasing demand,” Abbas said.

In addition, Emirates and the South African Tourism Board signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) as part of the airline’s commitment to growing the tourism market in the country.

“Under the MoU, we jointly explore opportunities to promote South Africa and encourage customers to experience the abundance of attractions that the country has to offer across our network of over 130 destinations. The South African Tourism Board will also work closely with us to support travel, trade partners and to operators across the Emirates network to develop and promote itineraries and to do special packages and promotional gateways and current incentives among other marketing commissions,” Abbas said.

He added that the airline also had over $2 billion (about R36bn) investment with the tourism board in products and services to ensure our customers continue to fly.

The Star

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