South African airline CemAir targeting new routes such as Victoria Falls & Tanzania 

South African privately owned airline, CemAir, is aiming to expand regional operations and has applied for several new routes on the African continent.

As per media reports circulating in South Africa, CemAir is set to fly to routes such as Tanzania, Namibia and Zimbabwe should the government grant permission.

CemAir CEO Miles van der Molen says they are continually adding capacity and he is pleased with their growth.

The airline, CemAir, best known for its flights to smaller towns like the popular tourist spot of Plettenberg Bay and the iron ore mining hub of Sishen, is also looking beyond South Africa’s borders.

“That’s where we see a lot of our capacity going moving forward,” van der Molen told Business Insider SA.

“We’re continually adding capacity [and] we’re growing quite quickly. Some of that capacity is deployed domestically, but we see that the domestic market, in time, when it fully recovers, will mostly need larger equipment [aircraft] for efficiencies and economies of scale…but the regional routes tend to be thin by nature, and the smaller aircraft we operate are practically the correct gauge for those routes.”

The publication reports that CemAir’s expansion plans were announced in a government gazette published on 23 September and the department of transport noted applications for new flight paths to be heard by the International Air Services Council (IASC). 

It is reported that the new routes being heard by the IASC include flights from Johannesburg to Kinshasa and Lubumbashi in the DRC, Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Windhoek in Namibia, and Mauritius.

“Then we’re completely in the hands of these government departments, and although we can follow-up, we have no direct access to those people, and it will be a mixed bag,” added van der Molen.

“The quick countries, the fastest we’ve seen that done was about five months, and the slowest is still ongoing at five years. So, as soon as we have all the bits of paper in place, we would start flying without any real delay…but the diplomatic process is slow and unpredictable.”

The changes and the addition of new routes come on the back of the global aviation industry slow recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic which left many sectors devastated.

Based at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, CemAir, increased its fleet size by more than 20% in the first half of the year.

However, the same cannot be said for the embattled South African Airways (SAA) as it was grounded during its business rescue process throughout much of the pandemic, only returning to the sky, as a much leaner operation, in September last year.

On top of that, Mango Airlines hasn’t taken to the skies in more than a year, while already beleaguered South African Express, which grounded flights at the onset of the pandemic, was placed in final liquidation earlier in September.

The biggest loss to South Africa’s aviation sector came in June when Kulula.com and local British Airways operator Comair grounded all commercial flights and was placed in provisional liquidation. 

Main Image: CemAIR/Flight Global