Flight prices, particularly on the busiest domestic route between Johannesburg and Cape Town, have spiked substantially following the collapse of Comair, which accounted for as much as 40% of supply in the market.
Airlines have been accused of price gouging from all quarters, but unfairly so as their pricing algorithms are based on demand.
Along with the supply crunch, where the number of seats on routes is down by approximately 9 000 a week, business travel also seems to have rebounded somewhat.
And fuel prices are at record highs, meaning that fares will also be structurally higher.
All of this has seen prices for near-term flights on the Joburg-Cape Town route spiking to over R6 000 for a return ticket.
Flights on Tuesday and Wednesday will cost R6 000 or more (on Lift or Airlink), while a return flight on SAA on Friday totals R5 600.
Because of the limited number of available seats, there aren’t really any cheaper near-term flights at ‘off peak’ times. This has dreadful consequences for those who need to travel at the last minute due to an emergency.
The supply crunch is perhaps most acutely seen on the country’s largest airline by volume, FlySafair, where there are no seats at all available for travel down to Cape Town from Johannesburg until Saturday. This despite the fact that the airline operates as many as 14 return flights between the two cities per day (with an additional three flights from Lanseria).
FlySafair operates nearly as many flights between these two cities- a total of 17 - as the other four airlines put together (six each for Airlink and SAA, five for Lift and four for CemAir).
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