SAA plans to operate the upcoming A330-300 to Washington from early next year.

South African Airways plans A330-300 service to Washington from Feb 2017

Source
https://twitter.com/Airlineroute/status ... 4507432960

KarelXWB wrote:

SAA plans to operate the upcoming A330-300 to Washington from early next year.

Can't be nonstop, so via where?

LAX772LR wrote:

KarelXWB wrote:

SAA plans to operate the upcoming A330-300 to Washington from early next year.

Can't be nonstop, so via where?

As discussed in a different thread, DKR/ACC. Makes total sense.

Only via DKR. JNB-ACC-IAD will remain A346. A333 will also go to LOS and GRU.

Haha.. Yet another post recently started mentions SAA about to go into liquidation.


Does anyone really know what is going on behind closed doors down there at SAA..?

evanb wrote:

Only via DKR. JNB-ACC-IAD will remain A346. A333 will also go to LOS and GRU.

SAA has DOUBLE daily into IAD? No wonder they're losing money...

Are they actually making money there? Or would MIA be a better market for them? Would it be worth moving from JFK to EWR for more UA cooperation?

TWA772LR wrote:

evanb wrote:

Only via DKR. JNB-ACC-IAD will remain A346. A333 will also go to LOS and GRU.

SAA has DOUBLE daily into IAD? No wonder they're losing money...

Are they actually making money there? Or would MIA be a better market for them? Would it be worth moving from JFK to EWR for more UA cooperation?

SAA has 1 daily to IAD. It's split between 3 and 4 weekly via ACC and DKR. I can't remember which is 3 weekly and which is 4 weekly though.

VX321 wrote:

TWA772LR wrote:

evanb wrote:

Only via DKR. JNB-ACC-IAD will remain A346. A333 will also go to LOS and GRU.

SAA has DOUBLE daily into IAD? No wonder they're losing money...

Are they actually making money there? Or would MIA be a better market for them? Would it be worth moving from JFK to EWR for more UA cooperation?

SAA has 1 daily to IAD. It's split between 3 and 4 weekly via ACC and DKR. I can't remember which is 3 weekly and which is 4 weekly though.

ACC is 4x weekly and DKR is 3x weekly...

TWA772LR wrote:

Or would MIA be a better market for them?

SAA was slated to announce MIA last year. Here at MIA, we were getting ready to announce it until they let MIA know that with the issues going on, they needed to put the plans on hold.

evanb wrote:

Only via DKR. JNB-ACC-IAD will remain A346. A333 will also go to LOS and GRU.

SA will fly A333 on JNB-ACC-IAD from 2 June 17

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air ... f-22sep16/

Miami wrote:

TWA772LR wrote:

Or would MIA be a better market for them?

SAA was slated to announce MIA last year. Here at MIA, we were getting ready to announce it until they let MIA know that with the issues going on, they needed to put the plans on hold.

I know there were some on here talking about MIA, but it was never spoken about at SAA.

evanb wrote:

Miami wrote:

TWA772LR wrote:

Or would MIA be a better market for them?

SAA was slated to announce MIA last year. Here at MIA, we were getting ready to announce it until they let MIA know that with the issues going on, they needed to put the plans on hold.

I know there were some on here talking about MIA, but it was never spoken about at SAA.

Uh? Yes it was..

Miami wrote:

evanb wrote:

Miami wrote:

SAA was slated to announce MIA last year. Here at MIA, we were getting ready to announce it until they let MIA know that with the issues going on, they needed to put the plans on hold.

I know there were some on here talking about MIA, but it was never spoken about at SAA.

Uh? Yes it was..

Did Miami go after SAA, did they court SAA? Maybe, probably. Did they overly get their hopes up over nothing. Absolutely.

Did SAA take it seriously? Did they speak to their partners? Did they conduct site visits on supply chain in Miami? Did they speak to operations about the planning of such a flight? Did they speak to the board about it? Did they seek approval from the Department of Public Enterprises and/or National Treasury? I.e. Did they take the steps they take in the case of starting a new route? No, they certainly didn't.

During the last 18 months there has been a lot of work on reconfiguration of the US network at SAA - this is probably what got MIA interested. Much of this work is focussing on rearranging 5th freedoms in West Africa. They switched four of the seven JNB-DKR-IAD flights to JNB-ACC-IAD, and the results of this have been very good. There is further work ongoing to gain more 5th freedom access in ACC to route some of the JNB-JFK non-stop flights through ACC (in addition to LHR, but that is a separate issue). There has been work to use ABJ for 5th freedoms to the US. There is intent for 6th freedoms from LOS to the US, but no progress. All the work and reconfiguration has been focussed on 5th freedoms. There is no serious consideration of an alternative destination in the US. There was some thought about a third destination in the US once more 5th freedoms were developed.

I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense for SAA to fly via Europe instead via some city in West Africa. Of course a route via Europe is 1-2 hours longers and hence burns more fuel, but isn't the market Europe-USA way higher yielding as long as they can secure traffic rights (which should be no problem)?



JNB-ACC-IAD 8,193 mi
JNB-LHR-IAD 9,297 mi
JNB-CDG-IAD 9,271 mi
JNB-MAD-IAD 8,835 mi

The savings on fuel alone on JNB-ACC-IAD going from 4 weekly A346s to A333s is US$ 74,800 per flight approx so thats US$ 1.2 million savings per month. On JNB-DKR-IAD, the savings per flight on fuel alone is US$ 897,600 per month so overall US$ 2 million or US$ 24M per year.

JFK if flown daily via West Africa on an A333 (would require 3 aircraft dedicated) too would save a similar yearly amount. In 2015, SAA officially announced a total net loss of US$ 108 million.

Some other news on SAA is that Ghana has granted it 5th freedom rights to operate ACC-LHR as well as ACC-JFK

http://afkinsider.com/131899/hub-aspiri ... don-route/

DKR and ACC both are 5th freedom. SAA is the only airline serving those markets directly from IAD. Why would they switch to serve IAD via some over-served European city???

CARST wrote:

I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense for SAA to fly via Europe instead via some city in West Africa. Of course a route via Europe is 1-2 hours longers and hence burns more fuel, but isn't the market Europe-USA way higher yielding as long as they can secure traffic rights (which should be no problem)?



JNB-ACC-IAD 8,193 mi
JNB-LHR-IAD 9,297 mi
JNB-CDG-IAD 9,271 mi
JNB-MAD-IAD 8,835 mi

I think what would make sense is for South African to buy planes that can fly nonstop. The 777-300ER, 777-200LR, 787-9 and A350 all have more range than the A340-600 that SAA is flying to the United States. Depending on the payload that they are carrying, the longer range twins have enough range even when departing from 5000ft elevation. Delta has bee flying JNB-ATL for years. One stop service with the A330 is not what the market wants. If SAA stopped in Europe, they then are competing against all the European carriers.

They would have been the perfect 787 carrier..

Newbiepilot wrote:

I think what would make sense is for South African to buy planes that can fly nonstop. The 777-300ER, 777-200LR, 787-9 and A350 all have more range than the A340-600 that SAA is flying to the United States. Depending on the payload that they are carrying, the longer range twins have enough range even when departing from 5000ft elevation. Delta has bee flying JNB-ATL for years. One stop service with the A330 is not what the market wants. If SAA stopped in Europe, they then are competing against all the European carriers.

The 77W cannot make a non-stop flight from JNB to anywhere in the US with any payload to speak of. The longest 77W flight out of JNB is to HKG, which is 1,300 miles shorter than JNB-JFK The 77L can do it, but it's not cheap to operate and even still has payload restrictions (because of tyre speed restrictions). We don't yet know enough about the 359 and 789's hot-and-high performance to quite make judgements, but everyone expects it to be good, especially the 359 and it's big wing.

SAA have been going back and forth between non-stop and one-stop services to the US for years. I think the conclusion has always been the non-stop can work if one can get the yield, but it's expensive to operate so losses can be big if one isn't getting great yields. The one-stop can work as well, if you get the right 5th freedom markets. In the past they had 5th freedoms at LOS and made very good money, but they lost the fifth freedoms at some point. DKR was never a big enough market to support daily flights to the US or South Africa (you need some loads in both directions for the fifth freedoms to work). Getting the 5th freedom in ACC is a big deal. Not only is it a much bigger market to both the US and South Africa, but it's also a big enough hub to support some connecting traffic, something which DKR didn't have. I suspect that SAA would be operating both non-stop and one-stop services to the US no matter what aircraft they had since they serve different purposes.

SAA flies double daily from Johannesburg to LHR, they have for years, because its their biggest international route. Stopping in Accra would only create problems for those flights, but SAA could fly from Accra to LHR with an additional route to London. The problem is slots and where is SAA or the Ghanaian Government going to get slots. The UK is about 11 hours flying time from South Africa so it can be flown by any long haul SAA plane.

Flights to the USA are another issue since JFK and IAD are far from Johannesburg, JFK is 7,900 miles away. Stopping allows using A330. What SAA needs are A350 or 787. SAA needs to fly long haul the way United is doing to China with 787 from San Francisco.

behramjee wrote:

JFK if flown daily via West Africa on an A333 (would require 3 aircraft dedicated) too would save a similar yearly amount.

Slight correction, but two aircraft, not three. For example, JNB-DKR-IAD leaves JNB at 6:25pm (day 1), arriving at IAD the next day at 6:25am (day 2). Then departs IAD at 5:40pm (day 2), arriving at JNB the next day at 4:35pm (day 3). While it's a tight schedule that doesn't require a third aircraft to do daily. When they operated it daily, it wouldn't be unusual for the inbound from IAD-DKR to operate the outbound back to DKR-IAD. The JFK flight is even better since it has a quick turnaround at JFK, depart JNB at 8:55pm (day 1), arriving at JFK the next day at 6:40am (day 2), departing for JNB at 11:15am (day 2), arriving in JNB at 8:05am (day 3) - so call that 1.5 aircraft.

jfk777 wrote:

SAA flies double daily from Johannesburg to LHR, they have for years, because its their biggest international route. Stopping in Accra would only create problems for those flights, but SAA could fly from Accra to LHR with an additional route to London. The problem is slots and where is SAA or the Ghanaian Government going to get slots. The UK is about 11 hours flying time from South Africa so it can be flown by any long haul SAA plane.

While London is a big market, the route has been performing very poorly. They have no connecting options at LHR since BMI went under and even the Star Alliance connections they can get at LHR are better served through FRA and MUC. There are some AC and SK connections but they are not enough. At the same time their yields to London have been destroyed by the competition from the ME3 + TK.

The idea is to move three of fourteen weekly JNB-LHR to JNB-ACC-LHR. They won't try sell the JNB-LHR sector on that flight, rather keeping that traffic on the non-stops, but trying to maximize the two separate sectors (i.e. JNB-ACC and ACC-LHR). Both of the separate sectors should do well. Before SAA started the ACC fifth freedoms they served JNB-ACC daily, so there is enough of a local market there.

Newbiepilot wrote:

If SAA stopped in Europe, they then are competing against all the European carriers.

That is right. But what is more important IMO, is that they wouldn't need to fill a full plane from SA to the USA. And thus could fly their range-handicapped A333 to Europe, offload some pax, enplane some European pax USA-bound and fly with a full plane from a major European hub to the USA. Yields could be okayish on all four sectors of such a roundtrip. Of course if they have ne problem filling their planes with a stop at DAC my point is mood.

Having 787-9s and flying all the routes nonstop would the ideal solution, but I was going by their current situation and their current fleet. Everything else is wishful thinking for their future.

SAA has only itself to blame for loosing money to LHR. Maybe it should offer Premium Economy like Virgin and British Airways. The ME3 is a devil the entire airline industry is dealing with but the many tourists they bring help the entire Country even if it hurts SAA. Another way to serve LHR is to lease one slot out and fly there just once daily, now its double daily.

CARST wrote:

Newbiepilot wrote:

If SAA stopped in Europe, they then are competing against all the European carriers.

That is right. But what is more important IMO, is that they wouldn't need to fill a full plane from SA to the USA. And thus could fly their range-handicapped A333 to Europe, offload some pax, enplane some European pax USA-bound and fly with a full plane from a major European hub to the USA. Yields could be okayish on all four sectors of such a roundtrip. Of course if they have ne problem filling their planes with a stop at DAC my point is mood.

Having 787-9s and flying all the routes nonstop would the ideal solution, but I was going by their current situation and their current fleet. Everything else is wishful thinking for their future.

Perhaps a return to MAN when it has its USPBC facility?

SAA also has an agreement with Africa World Airlines (not sure if its full codeshare or just a partnership) to connect the IAD-ACC flight with their regional destinations (Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale). SAA can now feed the IAD flight through AWA's destinations in Ghana and even LOS. AWA can also provide connections to feed South Africans JNB-ACC-ABJ-ACC-JNB flight.
I think SAA can create a very strong West African mini hub with the addition of the LHR flight.

Too bad Air Afrique didnt make it. I always thought they could have been a major African player.

The first A330-300 will be delivered soon.


A330-343 South African Airlines MSN1757 F-WWKP (ZS-SXK) - TLS by Olivier GREGOIRE, on Flickr

What is the cabin configuration of these new A333s?

behramjee wrote:

What is the cabin configuration of these new A333s?

C46 Y203

Rumor has it that the business cabin is 1-2-1 configuration (current aircraft are 2-2-2 configuration in business). As a point of comparison, their A340-300s are C38 Y215.

CARST wrote:

I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense for SAA to fly via Europe instead via some city in West Africa.i

There's a significant West African diaspora in and around D.C. There's a reason why the now defunct Ghana Airways used to fly to BWI.
I don't know how connections are in ACC these days but one reason for the stop there is to allow for connections to/from other places in West Africa.

evanb wrote:

behramjee wrote:

What is the cabin configuration of these new A333s?

C46 Y203

Rumor has it that the business cabin is 1-2-1 configuration (current aircraft are 2-2-2 configuration in business). As a point of comparison, their A340-300s are C38 Y215.

It's 1-2-1.
I am on a GRU-JNB route next year and this is what the seat map is showing.

But I am not clear if this is reverse herringbone format or stagger format. I hope it's the former ...
any idea...? They don't seem to publicise much. Although it's quite an upgrade from their current product

Must be one of the longest A333 routes at 8,134 mi, can they do this without restrictions?

[*]

Dutchy wrote:

Must be one of the longest A333 routes at 8,134 mi, can they do this without restrictions?

It'll operate with a stop in DKR or ACC on alternating days.

Perhaps SAA is one of two African continent airlines talking to EK about a QF-style joint venture.

jfk777 wrote:

SAA has only itself to blame for loosing money to LHR. Maybe it should offer Premium Economy like Virgin and British Airways. The ME3 is a devil the entire airline industry is dealing with but the many tourists they bring help the entire Country even if it hurts SAA. Another way to serve LHR is to lease one slot out and fly there just once daily, now its double daily.

Yes and no. While it is true that all European carriers park their planes all day in JNB, SA has the unfortunate distinction of parking their fleet all day in both Europe and JNB. Whereas the European carriers can repurpose the inbounds from JNB to TATL and Asian morning/afternoon departures. There's really no viable or sizable downstream network from JNB that makes good utilization of a widebody airplane.

Couple that with JNB's elevation, they are locked into expensive fuel guzzling 4 engine fleets if they want to fly nonstop to the US and Asia, or settle for 1-stop service on 2 engine airplanes which add costs and a less competitive schedule.

It's really picking the lesser of two evils, or exiting the market completely.

Does SAA have to fl to the USA ? The USA is just musical chairs for SAA Miami, FT. Lauderdale, Houston and Atlanta are cities that used to see SAA. Whatever happened to stopping in Cape Verde ?

IF A330 are being used then a west African stop has to be done. If an A340 does the 16 hour flight to JFK that leaves at 2130 why not stop in Cape Verde refuel so a full payload can be flown to New York and not have the altitude issues. It could leave an hour earlier and probably use less fuel anyways. Then the return flight could b flown nonstop.

jfk777 wrote:

Does SAA have to fl to the USA ? The USA is just musical chairs for SAA Miami, FT. Lauderdale, Houston and Atlanta are cities that used to see SAA. Whatever happened to stopping in Cape Verde ?

IF A330 are being used then a west African stop has to be done. If an A340 does the 16 hour flight to JFK that leaves at 2130 why not stop in Cape Verde refuel so a full payload can be flown to New York and not have the altitude issues. It could leave an hour earlier and probably use less fuel anyways. Then the return flight could b flown nonstop.

SAA used to operate the JFK route this way a few years ago when it was on an A340-300. The routing was JNB - DKR - JFK and the return leg was non-stop. They cancelled the DKR tech stop in favour of the non-stop because "passengers preferred the non-stop options in both directions", according to SAA.

Planesmart wrote:

Perhaps SAA is one of two African continent airlines talking to EK about a QF-style joint venture.

Indeed, SAA had discussion with EK about this nearly a year ago already.

airzim wrote:

Yes and no. While it is true that all European carriers park their planes all day in JNB, SA has the unfortunate distinction of parking their fleet all day in both Europe and JNB. Whereas the European carriers can repurpose the inbounds from JNB to TATL and Asian morning/afternoon departures. There's really no viable or sizable downstream network from JNB that makes good utilization of a widebody airplane.

I think you're overplaying the downtime in JNB. SA have several long-haul flight with early morning arrivals into JNB (LHR x2, FRA, MUC, PER, HKG, PER, LOS, ACC/ABJ (non IAD) JFK, GRU), but not all of them wait for evening departures, LOS, GRU and ACC/ABJ depart from JNB much earlier, and several regional flights including LAD and MRU, and up to five times daily CPT widebody flights, and even occasionally DUR, HRE, LLW and HRE will operate those widebodies. This massively increases utilization. On most days about thirds to three-quarters of the widebody fleet will be used for domestic/regional flying. Generally they try to maximize utilization doing this, but are constrained by line maintenance requirements in JNB.

There is, however, a genuine challenge with respect to non-utilization at outstations, particularly LHR, FRA, MUC, PER, HKG and IAD where there is considerable ground time. Not so much at LOS, ACC/ABJ, JFK and GRU.

jfk777 wrote:

Does SAA have to fl to the USA ? The USA is just musical chairs for SAA Miami, FT. Lauderdale, Houston and Atlanta are cities that used to see SAA. Whatever happened to stopping in Cape Verde ?

IF A330 are being used then a west African stop has to be done. If an A340 does the 16 hour flight to JFK that leaves at 2130 why not stop in Cape Verde refuel so a full payload can be flown to New York and not have the altitude issues. It could leave an hour earlier and probably use less fuel anyways. Then the return flight could b flown nonstop.

I think SAA does relatively well in the US compared to Europe. The JFK-JNB has always performed better as a non-stop even with payload restrictions and higher operating costs because there is a big revenue/yield advantage for the premium traffic on that route.

Stops in Cape Verde were removed since DKR and ACC provide better local traffic feed than SAL.

Something I've never understood about SAA. If their planes just sit on the ground all the day in Europe, why do their flights leave around dinner time rather than late at night?

LH from JNB to FRA departs at 1910 and arrives FRA at 0550. This makes sense because they want their aircraft in FRA to use elsewhere.
But SAA from JNB to FRA departs at 1915 - just 5 minutes later - and arrives FRA at 0610. Why dooesn't SAA depart JNB at 2355 instead to have their aircraft available for other flights in SA and to have an alternative to LH? I don't see why there are two flights a day JNBFRA but they leave within 5 minutes of each other.

AF022 wrote:

Something I've never understood about SAA. If their planes just sit on the ground all the day in Europe, why do their flights leave around dinner time rather than late at night?

LH from JNB to FRA departs at 1910 and arrives FRA at 0550. This makes sense because they want their aircraft in FRA to use elsewhere.
But SAA from JNB to FRA departs at 1915 - just 5 minutes later - and arrives FRA at 0610. Why dooesn't SAA depart JNB at 2355 instead to have their aircraft available for other flights in SA and to have an alternative to LH? I don't see why there are two flights a day JNBFRA but they leave within 5 minutes of each other.

They want the very early arrivals in Europe to give premium customers the opportunity for a full day at destination and also to allow connections into the earliest connection banks (very early arrivals allow connections to largest number of destinations).

Yes, that would make sense for Lufthansa, but for SAA you would think that they want to leave as late as possible so that premium customers have the opportunity for a full day of work in JNB and to maximize connectivity at JNB.

AF022 wrote:

Yes, that would make sense for Lufthansa, but for SAA you would think that they want to leave as late as possible so that premium customers have the opportunity for a full day of work in JNB and to maximize connectivity at JNB.

I'm not sure why the strategy would be any different for LH and SA. Connectivity for SA is maximized with that departure time. There are few inbound destinations that miss connections to the European departures.

If you look at all the north bound European flights departing JNB, they are all clustered between 18:50 and 20:30. The only outliers are the second BA flight (which might be more understandable because they have two departures) and the KL flight which has a totally different strategy given that they fly daytime on the southbound.

18:50 AF CDG
19:10 LH FRA
19:15 SA FRA
19:20 BA LHR
19:25 LX ZRH
19:55 SA LHR
20:20 VS LHR
20:25 SA LHR
20:30 SA MUC
21:10 BA LHR
23:15 KL AMS

AF022 wrote:

Yes, that would make sense for Lufthansa, but for SAA you would think that they want to leave as late as possible so that premium customers have the opportunity for a full day of work in JNB and to maximize connectivity at JNB.

The market is the same, the passengers are the same, why would SA give up the premium passenger to LH? The reason why you have BA/AF/TK/LH/SA departing in the 6:45-7:20 time slot is because that is the most desirable schedule by their customers.

airbazar wrote:

AF022 wrote:

Yes, that would make sense for Lufthansa, but for SAA you would think that they want to leave as late as possible so that premium customers have the opportunity for a full day of work in JNB and to maximize connectivity at JNB.

The market is the same, the passengers are the same, why would SA give up the premium passenger to LH? The reason why you have BA/AF/TK/LH/SA departing in the 6:45-7:20 time slot is because that is the most desirable schedule by their customers.

Agreed, and maybe I should also have put the arrival times:

18:50 AF CDG 05:40
19:10 LH FRA 05:50
19:15 SA FRA 06:10
19:20 BA LHR 05:30
19:25 LX ZRH 06:10
19:55 SA LHR 06:25
20:20 VS LHR 06:35
20:25 SA LHR 06:55
20:30 SA MUC 07:20
21:10 BA LHR 07:20
23:15 KL AMS 10:20

So in the JNB-Europe market, all the premium traffic originates in Europe? I didn't know that.

evanb wrote:

Planesmart wrote:

Perhaps SAA is one of two African continent airlines talking to EK about a QF-style joint venture.

Indeed, SAA had discussion with EK about this nearly a year ago already.

And ongoing.

AF022 wrote:

So in the JNB-Europe market, all the premium traffic originates in Europe? I didn't know that.

No, not at all, but there is clearly a greater business case to get into Europe early that leaving JNB later. Most likely because of the greater variety of connections on the European end, and a much letter number on the JNB end. As a matter of interest, there is greater diversity in the southbound flight times. I think a reasonable conclusion could be more O&D traffic on the JNB end than Europe (maybe LHR is the exception to this).

7:00 SA LHR 19:00
7:05 BA LHR 19:05
7:25 SA FRA 20:45
7:40 SA MUC 21:05
7:55 VS LHR 20:05
8:40 LH FRA 22:15
9:00 SA LHR 21:00
9:05 BA LHR 21:20
9:15 LX ZRH 22:45
9:55 AF CDG 23:25
21:15 KL AMS 10:25