BA bucks trend by doubling CPT flights
2012-10-25 15:30
Cape Town - British Airways will double its existing
capacity to the Mother City from Sunday 28 October - with two daily direct services between London Heathrow and Cape Town
International.
Both the inbound and outbound
services will fly overnight, with the additional frequency adding nearly 2 400 seats a week to the route. British Airways, which has been flying to
the Mother City for 27 years, is currently the only carrier to operate
year-round, directly between London and Cape Town. Virgin Atlantic recently introduced a seasonal flight between London and Cape Town until April 2013, while national carrier SAA cancelled its direct flight between London and Cape Town citing the route as 'unprofitable'.
Ian Petrie, the airline’s regional
commercial manager for Africa, says that over the past decade Cape Town has
emerged as one of the world’s leading leisure destinations and regularly
features amongst British Airways’ customers top 10 Christmas holiday choices.
“We believe it important to operate year-round and
not just during the peak summer season. This builds confidence in the route,
not only amongst inbound tourists and business travellers, but also local
customers wanting to visit London or travel onwards to the rest of our network.”
Petrie says the roll-out of a series of product and service improvements as part of the airlines £5 billion pound investment is nearing completion. This includes new aircraft such as the
Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A380. British Airways expects to be operating
both by July 2013, which will make it the first carrier to have these two
aircraft types in its fleet.
Other improvements include:-
Showcasing South African
wines in its First cabin - namely the Mullineux Syrah 2010, the
Mulleneux White Blend 2011 and the Mullineux Straw Wine 2010. Earlier this year when it won the Global
Traveller Award for Best Airline First Class, it was a South African wine, the
Newton Johnson Pinot Noir 2010, which was named the best First Class Red Wine.
- 2000 On board
Senior Cabin crew equipped with iPads, enabling them to access customers’ preferences,
onward flights and quickly resolve any service-related issues and allowing crew to
offer the sort of intuitive, personal service that was never before possible.
- New inflight-entertainment system is being fitted with the
new World Traveller and World Traveller Plus cabins giving customers 50%
more choice of movies and doubles the range of TV and music options.
- Improvements to ba.com, adding easier navigation on the website and ensuring that customers only need to enter the passenger information once, creating a simple secure online profile to which bookings details are then automatically
updated. The feature to save payment card details, allowing for a
quicker booking process, will be added later in 2013.
The British Airways summer schedule is:
Cape Town – London Heathrow, Terminal 5: Q BA58 departs 20:45 arrives 06:30; Q BA42 departs 22:10 arrives 07:50
London Heathrow, Terminal 5 – Cape Town: Q BA43 departs 17:40 arrives 07:05; Q BA59 departs 19:30 arrives 08:55
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