Internal SA flights

as i am planning out my itinerary - i plan on going from cape town to joburg, and to prevent some type of booking disaster that would delay my flight - i am flying into joburg one day before my game i plan on attending.

i.e. i have tickets for a game june 14 at soccer city; so i plan on flying out of cape town the day before which gives me enough time to get to the joburg airport, check into my accomodations and do some sightseeing that day and night and hang out the day of the game before heading to the stadium.

if you have to fly into another city the same day as a game, make sure you give yourself enough time to get from the airport to your hotel and then from the hotel to the stadium. if you have an afternoon game - fly first thing in the morning. if you have a night game - fly no later than early afternoon.

i have a feeling that during the world cup time there will be planes leaving every hour or 2 hours for Cape town - joburg; joburg-durban; cape town-durban, etc etc.

 

It's a nice idea, but where would they get the extra planes from?

And those trips would all be one way, so not ideal for the flight operators.

 

Extra? Every two hours?

SAA ALONE is already scheduling these routes pretty much every hour 6:00am to 10:00pm. You can even see the schedules for World Cup time now.

Apparently it appears to surprise some people that they have airplanes in South Africa. These routes are some of the busiest sectors in the world. Cape Town/Joburg is the 5th most flown airroute sector ON THE PLANET in terms of flights and 6th most in terms of passengers.*

J

* - from the wikipedia article. Neither measure is perfect by any means, but this sort of "will the natives be able to cope with all the big metal birds" garbage is pretty stupid.

 

yeah, I mis-read it and took it to mean charter flights just for football fans.

 

Pretty paranoid reaction. people are understandably jittery about transport of all forms. We are advised not to use buses, minibus taxis or trains as too dangerous and unreliable. Seemingly little public transport anyway apparently. Flights from England to Cape Town seemingly don't exist unless you take the joyous SAA at £1,700+ a person! It is no wonder people need to check these things out especially as I am not convinced by many whom I have spoken in the Country they fully realise what all this will entail.

 

the best way to get to cape town it seems is to fly to joburg and from there go to cape town.

from what i've seen on SAA - they have flights every hour or 2 to cape town...

 

http /passionford com/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p

 

don't open the link in the above message - it's the same person who keeps posting a link to a shoes website...

 

You are probably right but when I go on their poor website it says unhelpfully and untruthfully there are no flights available. BA for the first we of July have put these flights up from R500 to R4000!!!!

 

What do you mean don't exaggerate?! If you look at first week of July it states R4000, I have better things to do, not many I grant you, than make their highly inflated figures look even more inflated! http://www.britishairways.com/travel/fx/public/en_gb?eId=111011&timestamp=0724084050

 

unavailability could be because the return leg isn't yet within the strange 330(ish) day limit that many airlines have for booking flights in advance.

 

No really these R4000 are one way and one person and seemingly one piss take.

 

July that is.

 

don't forget, standard airlines are not like Ryanair etc. One-way tickets always cost far more than a return. Don't ask me why as I couldn't tell you, but that is pretty standard. It's possibly linked to them thinking such flights might be business trips (which is why if you book a flight returning the next day it often also costs a fortune)

It's not just returns either. Stopover journeys are often cheaper than a return to the stopover destination. I booked a flight earlier this year to australia, stopping in Singapore, yet my ticket was £150 cheaper than a return to Singapore on exactly the same flights/days. There's logic in there somewhere, but I don't know where.

 

I agree it seems pot luck with Flights, trains etc. anywhere in the world now. Can this be just from the internet? Without harping on about this disgraceful price bewteen CT & Jo'Berg, for the first week of July it is R4000 one way and return is just double that i.e. R9,837 and compared with and compared with the normal R1,857 I think it is a total disgrace wait for someone to find something worse.

 

this is actually just standard airline practice. Fares aren't fixed. They always fluctuate according to availability. That's why when I booked my Ryanair flight to frankfurt for the opening round of the world cup in 2006, seats were going for £400 (one way) in the days leading up to England's match there, but for my flight, two days later, the fare was 79p.

Proper airlines don't tend to fluctuate to that degree, but they do ramp up the prices if they expect demand to be very high. If they sell those seats at those prices then as a business, it was the right decision. If they don't sell them, they'll have to bring the prices down.

 

if you go on kayak.com

SAA has domestic flights available until june 18, 2010 as of now - i am sure each day they will go out another day.

for example for $232 you can fly roundtrip between cape town and joburg.
most of the cost is from taxes.

there are flights all day and night (every 90 minutes starting at 6 am) so i don't see an increase in the number of flights happening, unless they are from different airlines.

as for price - i don't know how much prices will fluctuate. in my situation, i know what dates i plan on being in cape town and joburg so i am probably going to my flight soon for peace of mind.

any thoughts?

 

South Africa also has several budget airlines, but they don't seem to have kicked in yet, so they aren't available.

 

Hope you are not trying to fly on SAA from Cape Town or PE to Joburg or back on June 26/27 though. Those are the quarterfinals days and are already sold out or blocked off. Going to be pretty hard to move around on flights during the WC I predict.

 

SAA only has domestic flights between cape town / joburg through june 18. i am only trying to fly back and forth between cape town / joburg on june 13 and 18. and also possibly june 10 and 21 depending on the flight costs from the united states.

not many flights go straight to cape town where i plan to spend the majority of my time. so i will fly internationally into joburg and get a SAA flight to cape town and back on the dates i plan on leaving the country...

the QF dates don't pertain to me at all, but flights for those days are not even available for purchase yet...

 

Think you are wrong. I just booked from George to Joburg on those QF dates though I did not complete the transacation. Try www.flysaa.com for yourself.