An interesting... rise of Middle Eastern airlines

I think it is quite clear at this point in time that Emirates, if it were to come down to a proportional popular vote, would probably be the world’s favourite airline. It is already the planet’s biggest airline by miles flown, and one of few to churn out a profit – in aviation this is virtually impossible. Aside from costs for the airline being lower due to differences in menial wages in the Middle East compared to Europe, there are a few notables pushing carriers from this region up above everyone else.

Asian airlines have already stolen the golden age of travel away from older and more established airlines in Europe and the USA. The only 5-star airlines (according to Skytrax ratings) in the world are all Asian: Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Asiana (South Korea), Hainan Airlines (China), Kingfisher Airlines (India), Qatar Airways, Singapore and Malaysian. So luxurywise, the States and Europe lost it a while ago.

Where the Middle East continues to take over has got a lot to do with its geography – it is halfway to everywhere. The New York times describes Dubai as within an 8-hour flight of 4 billion people – which the three giant Middle Eastern airlines (Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways) have taken advantage of. But I think the real recipe for success of Emirates and Qatar Airways in particular has been the destinations they choose to fly to, and pricing strategies.

Getting the pricing correct entails asking one’s self at what point people feel they have saved enough money that they are prepared to stop rather than fly direct. I once saved about R6000 flying Qatar Airways instead of SAA between Johannesburg and London. These airlines knows where that line is, and are now actually one of the most popular links between South Africa and the world, as well as Europe.

Emirates and Qatar Airways have also chosen their destinations superbly. For example, Sweden’s airline, SAS, doesn’t really connect the world and instead relies on an alliance with (totally overpriced, in my opinion) British Airways to get its people around. Well, Qatar Airways can get them to Doha and then connect them to just about any big business or tourist city in the world for less than they would pay to go via London, Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Emirates has an even bigger advantage as Dubai (it’s hub) is one of the world’s most sought after destinations - most flights ticketed through Emirates have the option for a free stopover in Dubai too.

South Africa is lucky in that Emirates also operates direct flights from Dubai to Johanesburg, Cape Town AND Durban – the only direct passenger flight from our east coast to a major international destination (even SAA doesn’t provide this – Durbanites need to fly the national carrier via Johannsburg). But Durban isn’t the only lucky one in Africa – Khartoum, Entebbe, Mahe, Accra, Abidjan etc are also all cities that one would not expect a major international airline to give much fervor to, but Emirates does – as well as the major cities – Johannesburg, Lagos, Luanda, Cario, Addis Ababa etc. Christchurch, Guangzhou, Ahmedabad, Kozhikode are probably as grateful. Emirates has seen the potential and performance of these destinations and made them work – at a lower cost to consumers.

From a customer point of view, there are also no hidden or added-on fees. Once you have paid for your ticket on Emirates, the only time you may have to pull out your credit card is to pay for overweight baggage (it’s a luxury we share with SAA by the way). Contrast this with a friend who flew United Airlines to Hong Kong three weeks ago and had to cough up for booze and to watch in-flight movies. British Airways charges £50 for a second bag (not overweight, just another one). Airlines are all ramping up these sorts of ludicrous charges nowadays. The golden age of travel is pretty dead for most Western airlines.

But not the Middle Eastern ones.

And Emirates reigns as king - in popularity and profit margins. Qatar Airways, a newer airline, as prince - a definite second best. And Etihad, Abu Dhabi's carrier, lies in wait with the potential to dethrone both of them.

An interesting... willy nilly flight schedule

Jacob Zuma, in Cairo for a high-level state visit, has publically announced that infrastructure has contributed to holding back development of trade in Africa. He specifically mentioned air travel and the lack of direct flight routes within our continent being a concern:

"If you wanted to reach some countries on the continent, you'd have to go to Europe first, then sleep on the way, wake up in the morning, wait until sunset and then fly back to Africa. That must come to an end." (quote pinched from Fin24's report (and to be fair, he also said a load of other stuff too)).

In doing so, Zuma has made it clear that he has no idea how airlines or air travel works. Firstly (small point), he is in Cairo, from which there is a direct and daily Egypt Air flight to Johannesburg. Ahem, it's our own SAA that doesn't fly to Cairo.

Secondly, airlines run on tiny margins, so routes that don't make money are cut, and cut swiftly. If there is no direct flight between Gabarone and Ouagadougou, it is because the route is not commercially viable. Once cannot expect an airline to make a loss just so we can fly direct everywhere.

One of the reasons Zuma lists transfers in Europe (for some reason not mentioning the Middle East) is because there is commerical traffic between African cities and European ones. There is enough to justfy a route between Lagos and London with British Airways, for example. There is also enough to sustain a route between Durban and Dubai (on Emirates). Frankfurt and Addis Ababa (Lufthansa). Madrid and Casablanca (Iberia). Paris and Algiers (Air France). And so these are the large flight centres we use if SAA or one of the big other African airlines can't deliver us there.

All of these major European and Middle Eastern airlines fly to other African destinations, so the Emirates flight from Durban can link us up with Khartoum. I don't see enough traffic between the Banana Boys and one of the world's worst summer holiday destinations to make that a viable route, but as both sustain enough traffic to make a route to Dubai viable, it works.

If Zuma wants these direct routes he should start by making our perenial somehow-loss-making-even-though-it-has-amazing-and-busy-routes parastatal to start hooking up with African centres.

There is no SAA flight route between Johannesburg and Cairo (although there is codeshare with Egypt Air), or Joburg and Kigali, Abuja, Abidjan, Tripoli, Algiers or anywhere in Morocco. Why do you think this is, Mr Zuma?

SAA only serves about 40 destinations (excluding Star Alliance partners). Kenya Airways (with Sky Team alliances) and Ethiopia Airlines serve about 50 destinations.

Now, compare that with British Airways which serves 370, Lufthansa which operates routes incorporating 202 cities on its own. Emirates flies to over 100. Is it any surprise that decent flight connections to African destinations sometimes involve leaving the continent? Can I hear a resounding NO?

Mr Zuma, if you want direct flight routes around Africa, develop the trade. Set the gound work. Build the relationships. Due to profitability opportunity and gaps in the market, the airlines will follow you.

Do not expect them to lead the way.

An interesting... SAA drops its Cape Town to Durban route

Image from flysaa.com

SAA has anounced that it will no longer be operating its Durban-Cape Town route anymore and will use Mango, its low-cost carrier, to service it instead.

Twitter has already gone mad about it today, as has the comment section beneath the article I linked to above. People find it odd (some find it offensive) that the national carrier won't be flying between the 2nd richest city in the country (Durban) and the third richest (Cape Town) anymore, but there is a case to be made for SAA making this decision.

Firstly, as stated in the article, most of the traffic between the two cities is holiday traffic. Something one will notice, on occassion, is that many holiday destination to holiday destination flight routes fail. If there is not enough business traffic to maintain the commercial viability of a flight route then it has to be pulled. Does anyone remember the failed venture of having flights between Cape Town and Miami? No business travel = fail. Business travel is undeniably important, particularly for a full-service airline (as opposed to low-cost - SAA and BA are full-service airlines, Kulula, 1Time and Mango are low-cost airlines) and it's why JNB-CPT and JNB-DUR are two of the busiest flight routes in the world.

Secondly, we often complain about the excessive wastage of money spent by parastatals. This was a difficult decision made by SAA to concentrate on its more-money-making routes throughout Africa. For the first time I can think of off the top of my head, taxpayers are complaining about a parastatal wasting LESS of their money. We can't just have a flight route because we sommer want one. If, according to the capitalist principles espoused by the readers of the site I linked to above, there is a viable business route between Cape Town and Durban, someone will step in and fill it.

Thirdly, there are four other airlines from which to choose, and if you are a businessman who MUST sit in the snooty part of an aeroplane, then fly British Airways. It's really not that much harder to type in ba.com rather than flysaa.com and it's a tiny bit more expensive, but you're expensing it anyway.

An interesting... first-time fear

It's not often I get scared in South Africa but my recent sojourn up to Polokwane I have to admit I was slightly. (My point of view is odd - I have actually only experienced blatant fuck you homophobia twice before - once from a cop who hit me, and the other when a friend's father threw me out his house.) I may live in Cape Town where all this malarkey is far more common, but I have never faced shit in Joburg or Durban.

That being said, I am a big city kind of guy. And Polokwane ain't one of them. And I was actually staying outside Polokwane on a small-holding. And the door to our room was held closed with a brick. Well, needless to say, I stressed about being a gay couple in small-town SA (anything smaller than Durban is small-town in my vocabulary). Since then, I have thought about homos in small-town SA a lot and done a bit of digging around (the conclusions of which you will discover when I finish).

On this note though, I have friend who lived in Kenton-on-Sea, and he sent me the text to a column he wrote a few years back which is relevant to what I was thinking about. So here is the column published by Alistair Mackay on Mambaonline - sometime in the past.

There is a lot to be said for small-town South Africa. At least, there is a lot to be said for coastal small-town South Africa: I've always believed no one would miss the Free State if it were flooded to make way for a picturesque little inland sea or covered - this is my humanitarian side coming through - from horizon to horizon in solar panels to ease the world's energy crisis.

Similarly, I have enough friends from Benoni who claim to be from Joburg to know that Gauteng small towns won't be winning any awards any time soon either. But small coastal towns are fantastic. From the sleepy hamlets of the Transkei and the tropical greenery of KZN to the reassuringly 'boutique-y' villages of the Western Cape and the unassuming dorps of the Eastern, our coastline is magical. In some parts magnificent and dramatic, in others gentle and forgiving, but everywhere beautiful.

My mother lives in just such a village. It is the kind of place that I would call salt-of-the-earth if I were feeling diplomatic. I have been served a cosmo in a beer mug there, and the only pizzeria in town eschews this newfangled mozzarella nonsense and uses cheddar on its pizzas. But it restores my soul to go home. After all, the Buddha was a rural fella. So it was only natural that a couple of weeks into a new relationship I invited my boyfriend along on one of my weekend trips home. I phoned my mother to tell her and she suddenly sounded panicked. In a quintessentially South African moment that made me laugh out loud she blurted out "but what will the maid think?" This is the same mother who told me on the night of my matric dance how proud she was of me for taking a guy, and how handsome we both looked. She dropped me off at Pride parades when I was still too young to drive and nursed me through all those ugly teenage breakups . But this was all while we still lived in Joburg; it turns out that being ip and liberal is partly situational. "Get a grip, mom" I said, and turned into Steve's* driveway to pick him up.

The weekend got off to an unremarkable start. I ate too much, drank too much and could barely motivate myself to wander onto the beach (There is a strong disincentive to move when you find yourself on a veranda armed with gin and tonic and confronting uninterrupted views of sea, sand dunes and nature reserve). We had dinner. We went to bed. I refused to have sex because of the proximity of my bedroom to my mother's, and we woke up to the tranquil sounds of waves crashing and birds singing.

It was so cheesily idyllic it seemed almost Scandinavian. In the feature film about my life there would definitely be an ABBA track to this scene. And perhaps the director would even throw in some animated butterflies.

I went downstairs to make some coffee and ten minutes later a friend who lives a couple of houses down from my mother's place arrived. "Do you know", she said, accepting a cup of coffee, "that you are the Spawn of Satan?"

It is testament to my naive and very un-Satanic nature that my initial reaction wasn't anger so much as slow-blinking incomprehension. "Nombulelo said to me this morning that you are the Spawn of Satan. Because there's a boy in your bed," she explained.

Now do bear in mind that Nombulelo is not even my mother's domestic; she is my friend's. Which means that there must have been clandestine cell phone conversations between the two housekeepers immediately after the discovery of the sleepy Steven. I erupted into a fit of curses and indignation. My neighbour looked a little alarmed by my rant and became downright terrified when my mother heard the news and joined in (If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, try scorning her laatlammetjie son). I was on an emotional rollercoaster that fell from rage into the precipice of deep sadness that people who knew and loved me could be so brainwashed by institutional religion, and settled finally on fear.

By that evening I was tormenting myself with mental images of angry locals with pitchforks torching our house to the ground while chanting uyabaleka uSatane!** Needless to say, Steven didn't get any that night either, and I barely slept. Every snapping stick outside sent me bolt upright and wide-eyed in bed.

I was surprised by how much Nombulelo's comment had upset me. I don't suppose anyone likes to be referred to as an evil demon, but it was hardly my first brush with Christian fundamentalism. My previous partner's father has the delightful belief that gay people need to be exorcised. But it especially upset me because I had convinced myself that I was part of that little seaside community.

I had worked in the village for six months the previous year. People greet me by name in the shops and everyone knows my mom. I used to give Nombulelo a lift home after work every day. It was all very neighbourly. But it transpires that inclusion was conditional on my apparent heterosexuality.

Why is it that gay people are not entitled to rural life? I love living in the city, but I'd also like the option of a quiet seaside existence one day. Why does being liberal depend on a high population density? And does acceptance of gay people only come with the full spectrum of acceptance of drugs, prostitution, urban decay and crime? What kind of pick-and-mix is that?

I see now why small towns often have reactionary, camp, self-ghettoising gay communities. It is defensiveness. Our sexual orientation, which to me is no more interesting as a characteristic than having blue eyes or being Chinese, becomes a defining characteristic in small towns. It is met with denial and abhorrence by some and with curious fascination by the well-meaning.

Wouldn't it be great if the barman casually enquired after my boyfriend while handing me my cosmo in a beer mug? But until that happens, perhaps I should listen to my mom and realise that in small towns, feeling welcome means deferring to what the maid thinks.

* Not his real name
** IsiXhosa for "run away Satan"


By Alistair Mackay.
See Alistair's blog here or follow him on twitter.

An interesting... Saturday

Really, I just had the kiffest day ever yesterday.

I was reviewing the Cape Royale on Friday night so myself and my boyfriend woke up in a swanky hotel room. The sun was shining and Cape Town was being beautiful, as it is when it is not foggy and you can actually see it.

I bounced down to the Promenade to kick off the day with some exercise. We headed back to the hotel to fill ourselves up with breakfast and, after a complimentary 20-minute mssage, we checked out and headed off to Fish Hoek to watch my sister play hockey.

It's a stunning drive through leafy Rondebosch, down the M3, up and over Ou Kaapse Weg, weaving among hills with the Atantic glittering ahead of us, separated from the green land by the white beaches of Noordhoek and Kommetjie...

Laden with wine, we watched her tear up and down the field while we drank wine and smoked and blew a vuvuzela in support of her team - the the amusement of some, and the chagrin of others. They got drilled, so we were forced to sit behind and "commiserate" afterwards... in the glorious African sunshine.

On our way back to the highway, we decided to stop and have a squiz at Muizenberg Beach as neither of us had been there before (I know... and I've been living here for like 8 months or something). And we just sat and spoke kak for a bit. But good kak.

A good conversationalist is hard to find.

And we sat there on a pretty empty Muizenberg beach, talking about the world, South Africa, relationships, family, and how it all fits together. We spoke about important things. unimportant things, clever things. We laughed at dumb, funny and silly things. For ages.

While we chit-chatted away, people passed us walking their dogs, children ran past squealing and throwing sand at each other. People, sea-wet up to their ankles, kicked up small amounts of sand as they moved their feet.

And then the sun started going down, so we brushed the sand off us and went home.

Pretty cool day, if you ask me.

An interesting... weekend in the Winelands

My boyfriend and I spent last weekend in the Winelands, sipping wine, eating good food and generally just being happy. Here are some pics.

It's just beautiful everywhere, isn't it? This is taken from Graham Beck.

This is the entrance to Moreson.

Ok I know there are clouds everywhere, but these ones were just so pretty.

How stunning is this? I nearly creamed myself with excitement when I saw it.

You should all go to the Winelands. It's fuckin stunning. You can get packages there for R999 at the moment with Kulula. Just putting it out there.

Spot the SA tourist

Back when I lived in Florence (Firenze, to those of us in the know) I used to often walk around the central part of the city because I found it so stunning. My favourite was to walk around il Duomo - the Cathedral - right in the centre of town and listen to the excited batches of tourists raving about the stunning building.

Image from Virtualtourist.

I walked past groups of Americans, loudly exclaiming their wonderment "OH MY GAWD - this is AMAZING!"

British tourists, noses in guidebooks would quietly rave "Goodness Geoffrey, I can't believe it is so beautiful. Look at the ornate detail".

As I rounded the building I walked past a group of three guys, one of whom happened to shout as I past. "Fuck bru, that thing's HUUUGE!"

Yep - we're easy to notice overseas.

An interesting... explanation for the lack of parking here

(Image courtesy of the BBC)

While Queen Helen sat in her castle in Cape Town and stared over the Land Of The Western Cape, she knew that she had problems. She summoned her concubines and said to them “go unto the rest of the lands and bring me the cleverest people you can find so that we can maketh the roadworks finished and build more parking because there is bugger all in Cape Town”. And so the concubines triumphantly left the Land Of The Western Cape and caught a bus to the wealthy kingdom of Johannesburg in the Land Of Gold. To celebrate, Queen Helen danced and sang in Xhosa which was weird because the concubines only spoke English and Afrikaans.

As they stepped out of the bus, they expected to see pavements made of gold, but they realised that the ground was indeed made of tar and bricks, similar to Cape Town, but, somehow next to the tar and bricks were funny lines painted in the road. Concubine Athol said “Gentlemen, what the devil is this?”. Concubine Joe replied “I do not know. Why do people paint lines on the side of the road?”

Then, because their arrival had been unannounced, Police Commissioner Cele got there, shot five concubines and then said “who are you chaps and why are you looking at those parking bays?”

“Ah” said Concubine Athol, “that’s what these things are” and he walked toward one of them. Before he had even taken a second step he was shot and then Police Commissioner Cele shouted “no sudden moves”. Concubine Joe said “We come in peace from the Land Of The Western Cape to find people help us complete the roadworks and make parking, because there are only like five parking bays in the whole of Cape Town and no one can actually afford to park in them”.

“Come with me” said Cele, “let us go to find these roadworks experts” and they drove on the N1 whose speed limit had dropped from 120 to 60 while it was in one lane because of road works. And then they arrived at the traffic department and met Jeff Radebe who said they should go back to CPT with one of his experts.

When they returned, Helen shrieked “NO! This is a woman. Women know nothing about parking. Go back and get me a man!”

So the concubines returned unannounced to the Land Of Gold but they never found someone to make parking because Police Commissioner Cele shot them all.

And that is why there is no parking in Cape Town.

An interesting... rewarding culture shock in CPT

Cape Town is so far removed from the other places I have been in South Africa that I can’t quite believe I am in the same country. As far as I can tell, the whiteys fled the highveld for Perth, London and the Western Cape: I find that the colour spectrum here is much paler than it is in Johannesburg, Durban or, most notably, Pretoria. I have had some interesting conversations with Cape locals and they tell me that it is due to the places I have frequented, which is a fair enough point of view, but I don’t find that the spread of people in the other three cities is selective to any particular establishments.

That being said, I don’t think that there is a more beautiful place to live in the world. I can understand completely why people who live here obsess over the mountain – I do and I have only been here for a week. Just driving around is a treat, and one can gaze from mountain to mountain to valley to wine farm – the only problem is the come-down when you smack the car in front of you.

I also find that this myth that CPT people drive badly is completely untrue. I have an KZN numberplate which basically means I have a licence to drive as slowly as I want, and people here don’t vloek me like they do in Johannesburg, nor do they drive up my arse, nor do they overtake when they shouldn’t. I am actually impressed. I don’t think people here drive exceptionally slowly either – in fact, people here drive as fast and break the speed limit as often as other cities in which I have lived.

Capetonians, on the other hand, are their own people. They differ greatly from Johannesburg and Durban people and I find that they subscribe to British social etiquette: basically, don’t speak unless you are spoken to, say nice things like “come over sometime” without meaning it, but be very polite. I don’t mean this observation to come over rudely, nor do I think Capetonians are unfriendly, but I think there is a different set of social manners down here, not a wrong set.

I think the beaches in this city are quite splendid too. Good god, Camps Bay and Clifton look as if they have been bleached. And the people on them look as if they have been designed by Dolce and Gabbana. I feel like a giant pale pig when I am within 250m of other people adoring the sun. Gym motivation extraordinaire... The fact that a portion of the population of this have their heads wedged firmly up their arse is kind of deserved with the beauty that walks around. I think that if I was that beautiful and rich I would do the same.

Oh well, I am off to go try and find some black people now. Chat soon.

An interesting... SA travel recommendation.

Something quite astonishing about South Africa is the reams and bucket-loads of places to visit, which are remarkably different.

For example, one can explore the dry Karoo, or go further south and connect up with the Garden Route.

A dusty and cold Johannesburg winter can be offset by the always humid, always moist Durban “winter” season where, kicking and screaming, those poor sods have to miserably bear temperatures which drop below 20 degrees for the week during which the winter hits its tumultuous peak (You can easily tell; the ice in your Jack & Coke doesn’t melt as fast as it usually does).

The wailing humidity and constant Vaalie-infested December heat in KZN can be dodged with a simple trip back the other way, towards the Highveld shopping district, where less humid but glorious thunderstormy weather can be located in Jozi or Pretoria – which are desolate every year between 16 December and the week before school starts as the locals flood toward the coast and piss off all the KZNers by driving at the actual speed limit.


And then there’s glorious Cape Town. Beautiful Cape Town. The Mother City. Wonderful Cape Town. Nowadays, I hear, one requires a passport to enter as the foreigners who own it all want to keep the South Africans out (exclusivity is key for celebrities). Lucky Michael Jackson died, so it is improbable that anyone is going to purchase Table Mountain anytime soon. The weather there is nice if you are English, or don’t actually know what happens the other side of the clouds. Oops! My bad. I forget there is a summer in CPT which is when all the foreigners come to stay in their swanky Camps Bay mansions and the rest of us are priced out. God forbid we get to buy things at normal value in rands. At least there’s always tik at a decent price.

You could always just go to and stay in Johannesburg, where the traffic ensures a brilliant chance to chill and do nothing for two hours as you attempt to navigate the four kilometres between you and 34789 shopping centres, where all you need is moisturising cream to sooth the perpetually dry skin you are bound to have.

If the big cities aren’t your thing, try Pietermaritzburg. You may have seen it on the way to Durban. You most definitely have a record of it in your mail box if you’ve driven through because of the confounding average speed cameras which ping you for going over 100kph. I have made a bigger contribution to the national GNP navigating that portion of the N3 than to SARS.

Why not PE? Maybe because of the thundering wind that never goddam stops. I can’t believe it is even safe to land a plane there. The runway, surely, must be wider than the entire set of six runways in Amsterdam. You would have to drive there to be safe. In a heavy car. Like a truck. Carrying concrete. And lead anvils.

Then there’s always the picturesque happy town of Knysna, so stunning you actually feel better just looking at it. And then you prance over the hot beach sand toward the Indian Ocean, and dip your toe into the sea as you gaze upon the scenic cliffs names The Heads. Then you realise the temperature of the water there and immediately phone 10111 before you eventually die of hypothermia.

Rather avoid that by going to nearby Plettenberg Bay, where you will be able to discuss, in depth, the crime in Johannesburg with all the eGoli expats.

An interesting... departure from Jozi

Before the sun woke up, we set off from Johannesburg and began negotiating our way through the roadwork-infested Gauteng highways with the famously beautiful Eastern Cape our objective.

It always amazes me just how interesting our country is to look at – even eyesores like Sasolburg must fascinate visitors to the Highveld, and that’s a mere blot on the stunning landscapes located outside just about any city in the country. Johannesburg seems to roll on forever, but finally we felt like we were making journey progress, and soon after we reached the Free State which often fields accusations of the most boring, flattest, straightest roads ever – almost an art class in perspective.

I, for one, think the Free State is beautiful. After spending time in London, one is constantly aware of how one should appreciate space, and the Free State offers plenty of it. I still love the barren expanses between cities and towns and can gaze forever at the horizon which seems further away in this province than at sea.

Should you ever tire of the constant farmland, fear not. Just short of Colesburg we headed off to drive along the wall of the country’s biggest dam. In what seems like nanoseconds, the flatness of the terrain becomes hilly around the Gariep Dam, and this is where we begin getting excited about our arrival in another province, the Eastern Cape.

Cradock is our final destination, and we will explore the areas around the town properly from the Fish River’s perspective with a canoe marathon going on. The river bisects Cradock and, before reaching the town, it swirls around farmland, under thorn trees, beneath bridges, over rocks and rapids and carries a load of excited canoeists down a stretch of South African water which has views which are enjoyed by so few so rarely.

One can fully value the beauty of South Africa with a journey from Johannesburg to this quaint little town.