Cape Town has gained thousands of extra seats on new and expanded non-stop airline routes to and from the city in the past six months, thanks to the work of Cape Town Air Access, a special division of Wesgro dedicated to expanding the city’s direct air routes.

Only established in February, Cape Town Air Access has already managed to secure a total of 408 400 additional direct two-way seats for the city. This follows the introduction of at least five new non-stop routes and the expansion of four direct services this year. Its efforts have already earned Cape Town Air Access a Routes Africa marketing award.

Now the focus is on establishing direct air links with China, the Western Cape’s seventh-largest source market of tourists and, with R2.7bn (€180.6m) in 2014, the province’s seventh-largest export market.  Cape Town Air Access project manager, Paul van den Brink, will travel to Chengdu in China next month in an effort to find a direct air access provider and to attend the World Routes Conference in Chengdu on September 24-27, as Cape Town Air Access has been shortlisted for the World Routes Marketing Award.

A break-down of numbers shows that 140 000 seats have been added from Dubai with Emirates having upped its service from two to three times daily. Some 110 000 seats will be added when Turkish Airlines starts flying daily year-round from Istanbul in November and 80 000 seats have been added from Addis Ababa after Ethiopian Airlines increased its schedule from two to four times a week plus four flights via Johannesburg.

The Amsterdam route has gained 30 000 more seats with KLM now flying daily to Cape Town year-round. Another 10 000 seats will be added  from Frankfurt in December when Lufthansa starts servicing Cape Town three times a week year-round. The same number of seats have been added from Nairobi, thanks to three-weekly flights by Kenya Airways, while another 10 000 seats are provided by Airlink with five-weekly services from Maun, Botswana. A further 10 000 seats will be added when Thomas Cook and British Airways commence three weekly services respectively from London Gatwick in December.