Since the start of the Cape Town Air Access partnership in June 2015, 10 new routes and 11 expanded routes to the city have been launched, with more set to come on stream in 2018.

The expansion entails the addition of more than 750 000 inbound seats on international networks.

According to Tim Harris, CEO of Wesgro, the Western Cape’s tourism, trade and investment agency, the focus of the partnership is air route development into Cape Town and the Western Cape. “The project was started to ensure the Western Cape is well connected to international and regional destinations after South African Airways stopped using CTIA as an international destination,” he said.  The partnership comprises Wesgro, the Western Cape Provincial Government, City of Cape Town, Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), Cape Town Tourism, South African Tourism and selected private-sector companies.

New and expanded routes

Since the partnership was formed, Kenya Airways introduced three weekly flights from Nairobi to Cape Town via Livingstone in 2016, and then last year launched three weekly frequencies to Cape Town via Victoria Falls, bringing to six the number of weekly frequencies the airline operates between Nairobi and Cape Town.  Last week TU reported on the start of direct services between Nairobi and Cape Town in June, three times a week.

Airlink launched daily services between Cape Town and Maun in Botswana in June 2017, flights between Cape Town and Victoria Falls in July 2017 and a second frequency between Cape Town and Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport (KMIA) in Nelspruit in July 2017. This regional feeder airline also operates scheduled flights from a number of South African points into the Mother City, including George, Kimberley, Skukuza, Nelspruit, Pietermaritzburg, Upington and Pretoria, according Karin Murray, the airline’s Marketing and Sales Manager.

Eurowings, Lufthansa’s low-cost carrier, started direct services from Cologne to Cape Town in November 2017, offering one service a week until the end of March 2018. Lufthansa itself, which introduced a direct Frankfurt to Cape Town route in December 2016, increased its services from three to five times a week year-round last year. Edelweiss Air, also part of the Lufthansa Group, increased its Zurich-Cape Town route to three flights a week on November 27, 2017.

Air France introduced three weekly year-round services to Cape Town in March 2017, and extended its services to five-weekly during the Cape Town summer season, while Ethiopian Airlines increased its flights to daily on the Addis Ababa-Cape Town route at the end of October 2017.

TAAG, which went from three flights to daily on its Angola-Cape Town route for the Cape Town summer season, is back to three flights daily, but will increase to four flights a week from March 26.

Austrian Airlines is to launch a direct service to Cape Town from October 27, offering two weekly services during the South African summer season.

The Cape Town Air Access partnership is currently in talks with three other airlines to expand their Cape Town services, says Deon Cloete, Cape Town International Airport GM.

Airport expansion

CTIA is on target to have served about 11.2 million passengers in 2017/2018 financial year, having broken through the 10 millon mark for the first time in the 2016/17 financial year, when it served 10.2 million passengers.

After an impressive 16% growth in international passenger traffic in 2016, the airport achieved 27% growth in passenger traffic from January to June 2017 and looks set to achieve record numbers at the end of the 2017/18 financial year. The airline currently has capacity to serve 14 million passengers annually.

Now the airport is about to embark on a major infrastructure investment programme to expand capacity to 20 million passengers a year. Cloete says that with plans to turn CTIA and its surrounding areas into a major aerotropolis, the demand for the additional capacity is definitely there.

The R5bn to R7bn (€330-470m) infrastructure investment will be used to build a new runway that will increase the number of airlines that can land at the airport from 30 to 45 per hour. The number of aircraft parking bays will also be increased from 35 to 40, with five new aprons enabling more airlines to park and more passengers to disembark simultaneously.

A new R600m (€40m) domestic arrivals terminal will be built with more baggage carousels and retail space. There will be a R1.3bn (€90m) investment in the international terminal, also adding more immigration counters and baggage carousels, as well as more space for processing passengers.

Construction on the airport is expected to begin in 2019 and will take two years to complete. No flight interruptions are expected during the construction phase.

Cloete says CTIA’s management team has managed to reduce daily water consumption at the airport by 40% and is hoping to increase that to 50%. He says an airport water committee is working hard to enable the airport to become self-sufficient by using water from underground aquifers. “We’re investing in purification equipment so that we can make the ground water potable and put it in our reservoir,” he said.

* Information on new and expanded routes supplied by CTIA and Lufthansa.