Fly Toucan, which describes itself as a new full-service airline, says it will launch in May this year.
The airline says it will start by servicing destinations that include Southern Africa (SADC), West Africa (ECOWAS Region), East Africa and its offshore islands, Middle East, Asia, UK, Cuba, The Caribbean and The Americas.
Naseer Ismail CEO of Fly Toucan told Tourism Update’s sister publication Travel News the airline will start off with charter flights, with an emphasis on leisure tourism charters, the way package holidays are frequently done in Europe. He said Fly Toucan will work in collaboration with Amrho Tourism, the wholesale tour operator specialist division of its mother company Amrho, and he invites domestic and international airlines to collaborate by means of codeshare, interline and marketing agreements using inter-modal air/ground modules in partnership with Amrho Tourism.
Ismail said Fly Toucan will be marketing inbound and outbound packages extensively in the new markets which he says are expanding dramatically - East Asia, the Middle East and West Africa.
To compliment its international offerings, Fly Toucan in collaboration with Amrho Tourism will be offering the unique and innovative “Amrho Air Hopper” multimodal domestic network to open up rural tourism opportunities and itineraries for both the international and domestic markets.
Fly Toucan says it wants to work with the travel trade. “The Fly Toucan development team encourages the travel trade to engage the team in developing new, exciting and niche packaged holiday itineraries.”
Currently, the airline says its offering is suitable for business and leisure travel, safari, sports, religious, Hajj & Umrah, tourism, school excursions and MICE groups.
The airline said in a Facebook post at the end of January that Nickicom (Pty) Ltd t/a Fly Toucan had already received its Non-Scheduled and General International Licence(s) in 2022, and had been hard at work preparing and developing its distribution, fleet, infrastructure and personnel.
Fly Toucan has posted ads on social media offering training for cadet pilots, cabin crew and ground crew, plus it also offers opportunities for ITCs, franchise opportunities for pop-up stores in malls and “township tourism container pods”.
Bookings with the airline will be available on GDS, through Hahn Air. Ismail added that the airline will have its own distribution through the abovementioned pop-up stores in malls.
