Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of a countrywide lockdown in South Africa from 26 March 2020, South African passenger airlines have decided to suspend operations for the time being to slow and contain the spread of the coronavirus. South Africa’s flag carrier, South African Airways (SAA), suspends all its domestic flights between 27 March 2020 and 16 April 2020. Airlink suspends all operations from midnight on 26 March 2020 and targets to resume operations on 20 April 2020. Mango has announced that it will halt operations from 25 March 2020 until further notice, while Flysafair also suspends all flights from 25 March 2020 and aims to resume operations in the morning of 20 April 2020. Comair, which operates scheduled services on domestic routes as a British Airways franchisee and also operates as a low-cost carrier under its own kulula.com brand, has announced that it will not be operating flights between 26 March 2020 and 19 April 2020. Cemair has so far not made an offical announcement regarding the suspension of services during the countrywide lockdown. The airline only announded plans to operate two additional Johannesburg <> Cape Town return flights and one Johannesburg <> George return flight on 26 March 2020 to “get you home befor the big lockdown”. We’ll keep you posted!
