South African Airways has announced it will stop flying between Cape Town and London Heathrow on August 15, meaning passengers to and from Cape Town will in future have to route via Johannesburg.

The airline also announced it would scale down its thrice-daily services between Johannesburg and London Heathrow to two services a day, but would use larger aircraft to accommodate passengers from Cape Town, effectively increasing its capacity on the Johannesburg/London route by 13%.

Speaking at a Cape Town media briefing, SAA’s commercial gm, Theunis Potgieter, said this was in line with SAA’s route optimization strategy, which meant redeploying aircraft on routes with the strongest growing demand, these being to Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America. The A330’s currently used on the Cape Town/London leg would in future be used to grow SAA’s services from Johannesburg to Accra, Mumbai and Perth; and to add Abidjan and Brazzaville to its network. The carrier was also negotiating to increase its weekly connections between Johannesburg and Lagos.

Theunis said stopping the service from Cape Town would have an immediate positive impact on SAA’s bottom line. He said Cape Town proved unprofitable for the following reasons:

•    A shrinking market: High Air Passenger Departure taxes in London and expensive transit visas for South Africans resulted in a 24% decline in demand on the SA/UK route since 2009, with VisitBritain rating South Africa amongst the top five fastest declining visitor markets to the UK. Demand for flights between Cape Town and London and the USA via London shrank from 650,000 to 560,000 passengers between 2007 and 2011.
•    Poor onward connectivity: The sale of Star Alliance member British Midlands to a non-alliance airline meant SAA lost connectivity at Heathrow as a result.
•    Increased connectivity to Cape Town by SAA’s competitors British Airways and Virgin Airways, which  were able to offer cost effective onward connections from Heathrow.
•    Twice daily services by Emirates had a substantial impact on SAA.
•    Significantly fewer regional or international connections from Cape Town than Johannesburg, forcing SAA to compete on the London/Cape Town route on price alone.

Theunis said SAA was engaging with the Cape tourism industry and was committed to continue marketing the city and province for tourism and trade purposes.