By Ogova Ondego
Published September 6, 2013
Mango, the low-cost airline owned by South African Airways, launched its first flight beyond South African borders with scheduled flights between Johannesburg and Zanzibar on September 1, 2013; the introductory fare was ZAR2,880 (about US$339),tax inclusive.
Ethiopian Airlines, on the other hand, has added Hargeisa in Somaliland to its growing list of international destinations in a move that is likely to help increase trade ties between the two Horn of Africa countries.
An Ethiopian Airlines 737 Boeing airplane made history by being the largest airplane to make a landing at the newly opened 2.4-Kilometre runway of the 58-year Egal International Airport on September 1, 2013.
This comes at a time when the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reports that demand for air travel recorded a solid month of growth in July 2013 and that African airlines’ traffic climbed 7.5% compared to July 2012, while capacity rose 5.6%, boosting load factor 1.3 percentage points to 73.6%. It concluded that expansion in trade is what is driving the healthy rise in demand for air travel on the continent.
