FlySafair has announced a new route direct route between Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) and Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport (KMIA), starting April 2.

It’s an exciting piece of news for the travel industry, and will make travel between the Mother City and the Kruger National Park much easier – KMIA lies just outside the park.

Two flights a week are planned, leaving Cape Town at 09h00 on Tuesdays and Saturdays and arriving in KMIA at 11h30. The aircraft will then depart KMIA at 12h05 and arrive in Cape Town at 14h50.

“We are very pleased to be able to start the year off with such an exciting new route. Although flights to areas surrounding the Kruger National Park are readily available from Johannesburg, there are limited commercial flight options from Cape Town,” said Kirby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer of FlySafair.

The airline says thanks to the concerted efforts of Cape Town Tourism, the city has experienced a boom in popularity, particularly with international visitors. International tourism in the city has boomed, increasing by 76% between January and July last year. During December 2023, the number of visitors to the city exceeded pre-COVID levels – officials recorded 317 000 international two-way ticketholders passing through the city’s main airport.

But local travel to the Mother City has also grown, and in the first six months of 2023 alone, Cape Town saw 3.2 million domestic two-way passengers pass through Cape Town International Airport, representing a 9% year-on-year growth. As a result, many of the local tourist attractions have seen drastic increases in the number of visitors.

FlySafair’s addition of the route between CTIA and KMIA now offers an exciting opportunity to spread the tourism success currently being experienced in Cape Town to other attractions across the country, while also making travel to the Kruger much easier for residents of the Western Cape. The Kruger National Park is one of the most spectacular and unique tourist attractions South Africa has to offer, and the carrier says these flights are likely to have a markedly positive effect on overall tourism in South Africa.

“Cape Town and the Kruger National Park are two of our country's most popular tourist destinations. Unfortunately, though, they sit in opposite corners of our country, making travel between them both inconvenient and costly,” said Gordon. “We hope that by introducing our low-cost option to the market, we can encourage more tourists to build a visit to Kruger into their trip itineraries while also opening this gem to the people of the Western Cape.”

The flight will be operated by FlySafair’s Boeing 737-800.