South African Airways (SAA), a member of the Star Alliance Network, will continue to expand its African route network to new destinations while adding capacity on various routes.

 This is according to SAA Chief Executive Officer Khaya Ngqula at a briefing held at the SAA headquarters at OR Tambo International Airport on Wednesday.

 “Our plans for Africa are to keep with our mandate to be an African carrier with a global reach,” he said.

 “We are planning to add capacity so we have more flights and destinations to our African route network criss-crossing the continent.”

 Two additional flights per week to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were recently launched while one additional flight per week to Luanda, Angola, was introduced to the schedule.

 He added that Star Alliance has allowed SAA to extend its network to reach beyond the points served directly to 897 destinations in 160 countries.

 “SAA fully supports the drive from the alliance to further build on its presence in Africa.

 “As SAA, we see our primary role in the Star Alliance network as bringing customers from around the world to Johannesburg, the financial capital of the continent and then take them into the rest of Africa,” said Mr Ngqula.

 This follows Star Alliance endorsing opportunities for the further enhancement of airlines in a workshop at OR Tambo International Airport this week.

 Star Alliance Chief Executive Officer Jaan Albrecht said the alliance was proud to have SAA as its first member in Africa.

 “Our aim is to make our alliance offerings available to many more customers in more countries in Africa.

 “By exchanging our experience, knowledge and skills, we will further strengthen our partnership for the benefit of alliance airlines, the employees and customers,” said Mr Albrecht.

 Asked if oil increase would have a negative effect on increase of airfares, Mr Ngqula said it was  impossible to increase prices.

 “What can be done is to recover costs from levies as we do not want to discourage people from flying.”

 In November 2007, SAA announced its hope to reach a 7.5 percent profit margin by March 2009, as a result of its restructuring process.

The restructuring was aimed at renegotiating working conditions, cutting unprofitable routes and reorganising the whole business.

SAA hoped to reduce its high operations cost base in order to grow revenue, after it lost more than R600 million outside Africa alone in 2006. -