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Qantas will end its codeshare agreement with South African Airways on May 31 covering services between Perth-Johannesburg and Sydney-Johannesburg.
Qantas will retain its daily Sydney-Johannesburg service, but through its codeshare agreement with Emirates, the Australian airline will now direct its Perth passengers wanting to travel to South Africa onto Emirates services via Dubai. South African, meanwhile, will be left without a service to Sydney as it will no longer be able to place its code on Qantas’s Sydney-Johannesburg flights. South African stopped operating to Sydney with its own aircraft in 2000.
The move comes after South African Airways announced earlier in February a codesharing agreement with Virgin Australia between Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide (but not Sydney) to connect to its Perth-Johannesburg flights.
“Australia and New Zealand remain important markets for SAA and its customers and although we no longer operate flights ourselves to Sydney, we will maintain our presence in the country through our own operations to Perth and all of our established partnerships,” Kendy Phohleli, SAA general manager commercial (acting) said in a statement. “We have always worked well with Qantas and together we are looking at a smooth transition for the benefit of our respective clients which are both business and leisure travellers.”
Pauline Stranack
says:This is crazy, the flight from Perth to Dubai is a nightmare – it took 11 1/2 hrs when we went to Europe, then nearly 5 hours in the jam packed Dubai airport, and another 6 1/2 hours to Venice. Never again. Now we are being told to do the same for the relatively short hop to Johannesburg from Perth! Goodbye Qantas.
Reverend
says:it is a shame the codeshare is ending both SAA and Qantas have been code sharing for 13 years so for competition purposes it is a good thing because Alan Joyce basically said he will pull out of places that are not profitable. so he could pull out of south Africa. so then SAA and air maauritius fly from perth to Africa only.
ide rather they codeshare so 3 airlines fly to Africa. The codeshare needs to be reunstated
bob
says:To build a “Bigger and Better qantas” Alan joyce must shrink and stop flying qantas to places? Can some one please explain how this
Greg
says:I hope Qantas is offering their customers who booked on SA through their website to Johannesburg a refund and paying any difference in fare to book with SA directly.
What a ridiculous decision to pull out of this code share early.
How long is this Qantas circus going to continue for?
B G Price
says:Another Joyce head in the sand stuff up.
When is someone going to realise that he and his board are driving QF into the ground.
Aviation journo Geoff Thomas has a double page spread in the West Australian today castigating QF management for bad bad decisions and here’s another one.
They don’t deserve to stay in Business
B Bunbury WA
Dee
says:If VA hasn’t grabbed SAA and started talking code-share, status, plus earn and burn between both Airlines, my thoughts on J.B’s so far excellent Management, would start to wilt.
Andrew Bowman
says:This is great news. For years now Qantas have screwed passengers on this route with the protectionism the ACCC has given them .Like the transatlantic route before we will now see real competition and a price fall on passenger fares. Good riddance to Qantas
A thought
says:Is this the beginning of the end of QF International? Rumours have it QF will only fly to DXB and Emirates will carry you from there.
I agree with Pauline it is ridiculous to go PER-DXB-JNB that is 20 hour 9 minutes of flying time plus transit time in DXB. PER-JNB is 10 hours 51 minutes. I know which way I would rather travel.
Reverend
says:i hope common sense prevails and I hope the QF SA codeshare comes back. I hope Qantas gets the A380s andboeing 787-9s to replace the older jets.
Andrew Dean
says:While Qantas continue to have a low cost carrier CEO at the helm they will continue to shrink and sadly, I believe, disappear.
With Joyce at the helm they have only ever cut cut cut. He has missed the opportunity for expansion – examples like Air India now fly direct to Sydney – Qantas could have done that.
Joyce needs to GO GO GO.