Cape Town Air Access lines up new flights, expansions

Cape Town - This week the team from Cape Town Air Access participated at the World Routes conference held in Barcelona, Spain, and lined up three new non-stop flights to Cape Town International and two expansions.

Details of the flights will be announced in due course, according to the Western Cape investment agency Wesgro.

World Routes is the global meeting place for airline, airport and aviation stakeholders. This year Cape Town Air Access shared a booth with Airports Company SA (ACSA), Durban Direct and the Gauteng province.

Wesgro CEO Tim Harris was also an invited panellist on World Routes’ "Spotlight on Africa" discussion on Tuesday. During this discussion critical topics affecting the continent and its development were covered, ranging from infrastructure to air access increasing trade and investment with major markets like China.

Cape Town Air Access is a partnership, based at Wesgro, which includes the Western Cape Government, the City of Cape Town, Cape Town Tourism, ACSA and SA Tourism and is the focal point for international air route development in the Western Cape.

According to Wesgro it was thanks to this partnership’s efforts that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) experienced close to 30% growth in international passenger traffic in 2016, breaking the 10 million passengers per year mark for the first time.

From January until June 2017, international passenger traffic grew by 27% compared to the same period last year. Fast growing markets include North America, Brazil, France, Germany and South East Asia. On the African continent strong growth has been recorded for Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius and Zimbabwe.

The new flights and route expansions secured by Air Access so far mean that more than 130 000 international seats will be added to CTIA’s capacity during the upcoming SA summer season starting in October 2017, according to Wesgro.

“Cape Town Air Access is a successful model of how route development can be driven as part of a collaborative approach by government and business. World Routes was a great success for our team this year with multiple commitments for new routes and expansions,” said Harris.

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