Italian carrier plans April service launch

Leonard Neill
AN ITALIAN airline which has until recently concentrated its flying operations on domestic services, is planning to introduce a service to South Africa from next April. According to Airports Company of SA (Acsa), Volare Airlines is aiming to fly between the two countries from April 1.
Little is known locally about the airline except that it has a fleet of 19 Airbus aircraft of various sizes, and that it is currently introducing a service between Italian airports and Brussels as its first international destination.
According to Carmine Bassetti, Acsa executive director for aviation services, Volare has committed on paper to SA flights from April 1 and a schedule is being worked out at present.
Volare is one of three Italian airlines negotiating to fly into South Africa, according to Bassetti, with Alitalia considering re-entering the route after withdrawing earlier this year. The other airline in contention is Eurofly, an Alitalia subsidiary, which is considering the introduction of six flights a week from Europe to SA, also starting in April.
Bassetti says that after lengthy talks Austrian Airlines is also planning to reintroduce one or two flights a week between Vienna and Johannesburg and Cape Town. The airline withdrew its service last March.
A number of airlines have recently introduced additional flights to SA, with KLM adding three more weekly from Amsterdam and Lufthansa introducing an entirely new route with six weekly flights from Munich to Johannesburg.
In addition Virgin Atlantic and Air France have switched from A340 aircraft to the larger Boeing 747s on UK-SA and Paris-SA schedules.