SAA has threatened to “significantly reduce” its non-stop services between South Africa and Australia should the Australian International Air Services Commission (IASC) not approve its longstanding codeshare arrangement with Qantas.

On June 14, Qantas applied to the IASC for an interim authorisation for use of the capacity allocated to the airline until March 31, 2013.

Then, on July 5, Qantas officially filed another application for the new determination and codeshare condition for its codeshare with SAA until March 31, 2016.

In its new application, Qantas argues that the Australia to South Africa route is a “long, thin and isolated route” and that it connects two relatively isolated destinations, located far from the financial and business hubs of Asia, Europe and America.

In a letter to the IASC supporting Qantas’s recently re-submitted application for the codeshare, SAA argued that both airlines would have great difficulty operating the same number of frequencies currently offered in their respective markets.

In the letter, SAA also confirmed that it would introduce a seventh weekly service from Johannesburg to Perth, effective August 17. However, it said that, should it lose the Qantas feed, rather than increasing flights to daily, it would have to “promptly and significantly” reduce its flights.

“Without the Qantas-contributed traffic and contribution to the cost of the operation, SAA would be liable for 100% of the operating costs and demand would be too lean, taking into consideration that SAA would no longer be able to rely on QF’s substantial customer base,” SAA said in the letter.

SAA further highlighted the “emergence” of third, fifth and sixth freedom carriers both in Australia and South Africa. It said those carriers had recently introduced capacity at such an exponential rate that the impact had been comparable to siphoning passengers away from the direct service. As primary carriers in the market, this made it even more difficult to compete effectively with its non-stop services. “Eliminating the codeshare agreement between our two carriers will only exacerbate the situation and hasten the reduction of non-stop flights between our two countries, as is already happening in other countries.”

A highly probable end result, SAA said, would be that only one carrier was left selling direct services on the SYD-JNB route, and with reduced frequencies.