FlySafair is considering introducing a number of regional routes and has applied for rights to fly between Johannesburg’s ORTIA and Mauritius, Zanzibar and Windhoek. The airline has applied for three weekly flights for all of these destinations and will know by October if its applications have been approved.

The airline’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kirby Gordon, said the airline had been eyeing these routes for a while and decided that it might as well get the ball rolling with the application process sooner rather than later.

He said airline flight applications were publicly gazetted before being reviewed by the Department of Transport’s International Air Services Council. This process usually takes about a month.

“During August, FlySafair operated at about 14% of its August 2019 seat capacity and we continue to suffer losses while so few of our aircraft are in the air. We urgently need to find new opportunities to deploy aircraft and, at a time when so many regional competitors are operating under conditions of business rescue, this may be a good time to expand our route network in this direction,” said Gordon.

He added that there would be a lot of work to do before FlySafair was in a position to launch any of these routes. Amongst other things, it would need to correctly equip its aircraft for international trips, establish a presence in the various international departure halls, gear up its technology to be able to collect and process the necessary passport and visa information and put processes in place for the repatriation of international currency.

“We will only be in a position to look at launching these routes in 2021 at the earliest, and even this is dependent on many factors, including the recovery of the domestic market,” said Gordon.