ROUTES NEW TIMETABLES FOR AFRICA CORE DESTINATIONS

Item: SAA
Rating: 2
Author: Pierre W

Escapes all logic to see that SAA has abolished its most profitable and stable Friday flight back to JNB namely out of ACCRA. Kenya Airways have taken all business passengers on the 20.45 departure out of ACC Friday nights !!! Ghana / ACCRA is the country with the MOST resident South African of any country in Africa in the most profitable route for SAA for 13 years. SAA has made a very large mistake as this decision had no basis on LOAD FACTOR. It is simply said to be due to adding Abuja as a new route - an unproven route where almost NIL South Africans work beyond the embassy!!! (Delta pulled out of there last month due to inability to obtain the ticket sale proceeds !!!!) I have, along with many other businessmen and expats, travelled ACC/ JNB for 13 years regularly on Friday and Thursday nights - with load factor ALWAYS at +90% ---- SO WHY TAKE SAA away from your regular and most profitable client group in regional Africa??? SAA regional have done Kenya, Ethiopean and EK a massive favour by passing off your business passengers - once again - to another AIRLINE. As a shareholder of SAA I am deeply saddened by the judgement error made by the new timetable and also I have seen your next timetable. A catastrophe that needs to be redesigned from scratch. SAA’s new Africa timetable simply follows a very weak solution to asset deployment --- without any consideration of prioritisation of route based on historic profitability.and loyal repeat regional customer logical needs, on top of lack of logic as described above. For an airline like SAA to abolish a Friday flight back to JNB from its MOST profitable single Africa destination makes no sense, and this decision WILL definitely have a long term impact on business travel from its LARGEST high profit margin customer base. It is truly frustrating as businessman to see how an airline can commit customer relationship breach of such an important scale and mess with its best route on a Friday evening - it is a total frustration to your regular customers and voiyager members. Key message to SAA executive manafgement : ALL SA BUSINESSMEN who pay top dollar for their SAA seats like to come home for the WEEKEND, NOT WANTING TO FLY A DAY FLIGHT DEPARTING ON MID DAY SATURDAY. Same for all your expat regular customers who end their work week on a Friday afternoon. The only PAX’s you will get to fill the premium revenue seats on this new timetable will be the low price bidders – and this is not a clever way to fill our planes. We already see ample economy seats offered at just above $300 per seat per segment on the new timetable, replacing those who filled your plane even at $690 per segment average revenue. - this is no way to operate this airline!!!! ________________________________________________________________________________________

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