BRITISH Airways has expressed concern about the South African government's silence regarding its plans on how to increase airlift from London for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

Speaking at a media briefing in Cape Town recently, Lin Glass, BA's gm for South Africa, Mauritius and the Seychelles, warned time was running out because, like most major carriers, BA's operational plans and capacity allocation across its route network was decided two years before an event. “We've raised these concerns both publicly and privately, but to date we have had no official response. So far there has been a lot of rumour and seemingly unsubstantiated statements, but we've yet to be formally approached with anything concrete.” Glass confirmed that BA still planned to introduce A380 services on the Johannesburg route when the airline received its new fleet of 12 A380s and 18 B787s between 2010 and 2014. Meanwhile, BA began operating a double-daily summer schedule to Cape Town at the end of October, adding 14 040 seats on the route between November 2007 and March 2008.  Lin said forward bookings were very good.  “We're confident we'll have no trouble filling the additional capacity.” She said BA had no immediate plans to apply for additional flights. “We campaigned long and hard to get the Cape Town and Johannesburg double-daily schedules and we are currently happy with these. They make operational sense and they make business sense. In the past year we've exceeded our revenue targets and should continue to do so, given the additional capacity and groundbreaking new on-board products.” She said the new Club World seats (costing R1,4bn) launched locally in May were now found more regularly on BA's SA services. Capacity increased by 8% on SA services with Club World on some B747s increasing from 38 to 52 seats.