Waterbomber wrote:
It's wishful thinking here.
LX doesn't have the customer base nor excess capacity to consistently fill 180 to 200 seat A321's to Africa.
The routes to/from Africa are very thin, and with the level of competition that there is now, there is no room for new entrants.
There is no O&D from ZRH and LX has failed to make Cameroon work, transferring those routes to SN.
Look at East Africa where a true bloodbath has LX pricing NBO flights at firesale fares.
LX transefered the route to SN, probably because it was not neccesary to see two Europeans Airlines of the same alliance (and group Swiss and Brussels Airlines are in Lufthansa Group) serving DLA. It's a common practice, to avoid an overcapacity. In 2015, Lufthansa ended its route to Accra. They have resumed service to Nairobi, while in the same time Brussels Airlines ended Nairobi service and resumed Accra service
Swiss will do like Turkish Airlines or Qatar Airways do. They serve many routes in Africa, with narrowbodies. And point to point traffic from these destinations is probably lower than from Swiss to Africa.
About Turkish Airlines:
Turkish Airlines profits in Africa, where others fear to fly [September 2017] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turk ... SKCN1BN1CZSwiss is making buisness in Africa, but they are more quiet than USA, China, France, India or Germania. In Rwanda, they have many projects in Education, hospitality, ICT & Pharma. Rwanda and Swiss signed an Air Service Agreement, this year
I won't be surprised that Swiss serves Kigali with its A321LRs, in the medium term, when the demand will be bigger.
Kigali is perfect destination for premium pax, with lots of Conference (3rd highest ranked MICE destination in Africa), many NGO & Diplomatic staff, high end tourism and biggest hotels chains have or will open hotels (Radisson, Sheraton, Mariott, Hilton,...).
Zurich is well linked to Europe and North America, with Swiss and Swiss partners (United Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Brussels Airlines, SAS, Austrian)