DESPITE THE rather hasty disappearance of World Airways from the US-SA air corridor, there's a distinct limit on how far SAA can go to replace the three-flights-a-week that the US carrier had implemented on the route.
According to executive manager (finance), Eric Wasserman, the airline is still restricted by the conditions of the bi-lateral air services agreement between the two countries - and, of course, by the lack of profit it would show if it increased its frequencies by too large a number.
At this stage, we have the rights to put on one extra flight each to both Miami and New York, and we will probably do this later this year, he said. But we're not likely to go further than this for the time being. Often, smaller airfreight forwarding companies without the guaranteed space that we larger companies have, can find their cargoes being dumped when space falls short, said Mike Millard, national marketing manager of AEI-Profreight. If any additional flights beyond those two planned by SAA come on-stream, it will be another carrier which flies them, according to Wasserman. Not that he has any suggestions as to which airline this would be: But somebody else is likely to try to get in there eventually, he said.
