Outbound traffic on British Airways remains “somewhat depressed and extremely competitive”, but this is being offset by “reasonably good inbound demand”, says commercial manager, Sue Botes.

She believes recovery for outbound traffic will be slow in 2010 because it will be linked to the general performance of the South African economy. BA will continue to manage its capacity and revenue in this regard. Inbound, however, is expected to increase in soccer World Cup related travel. “Bookings over the tournament are good and we are considering more flights. Long-term we’re hopeful that the international exposure the World Cup brings continues to stimulate inbound tourism beyond 2010. Not only should it provide a vital shot in the arm for a travel and tourism sector recovering from an awful year, but it also does so in mid-winter, when travel generally and leisure travel particularly, falls off.” She says BA will not inflate its prices on its international flights for the World Cup, but will charge its normal high-season fares. After England qualified, the carrier had an upsurge of inbound bookings for the beginning and end of the tournament, while outbound flights around July 11 also filled up. “We’ve since seen load factors increase throughout the tournament. There are still seats left, although we expect these to fill up now that the final draw has happened.” At this stage, BA will operate 19 services to Johannesburg and daily services to Cape Town over the tournament. It will make a call in the next few weeks whether to add capacity. Meanwhile, BA is also seeing good inbound demand over the South African summer peak with many flights already booked up, Botes says. Earlier this year, the airline made recession-linked capacity cuts, reducing its Johannesburg services from 19 to 14 a week and reducing its expanded summer schedule to Cape Town from 14 to 13 services, as one of the aircraft now flies a second service between Luanda and London. It now also now uses a combination of B747-400 and smaller B777 aircraft to Cape Town rather than an all-B747 service.