I was reading an article last night that was trying to justify the high cost of air travel internally in South Africa. The CEO of one of the two airlines operating blamed the cost of living since Covid and the other part being the jet fuel prices.
The problem with jet fuel in South Africa is there is no local refinery so jet fuel is imported as jet fuel from another country that has used their own refinery. South Africa shut down it's last refinery back in 2022 due to damage from severe flooding. The refinery was sold for cents on the dollar due to the plant not being decommissioned properly and this still as to happen first. Reports suggest that this is a 5 year project to get it back to working order.
The other problem which has caused flights to be cancelled due to stringent storage requirements due to customs and excise licensing conditions. Importers have temporary license's and until they are granted a permanent license thy will not invest in storage facilities. A proper shambles ad why the airports have been know to run out. The airports should be investing in storage facilities because then they can buy in bulk negotiating cheaper prices ad the question should be sked why they are not the ones importing directly.
A sad state of affairs really when you consider all countries import crude and the they refine this making the by products they required to help run the economy like diesel, petrol and jet fuel. Madness to think every liter of fuel is being bought in as a finished product. Whoever is importing this is making an absolute killing and would not like this gravy train to end any time soon.
If one considers you can find a cheap return ticket to Europe for around R11K and a 2 hour internal flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town will cost you around R7K. The international flight is over 10 hours long each way so a rough difference of 16 hours for an extra R4K. Yes it is also true the taxi and take off burn roughly 10% of an aircrafts total fuel plus decent another 5 % so short flights do burn more fuel because the trips are much shorter.
I just don't see how they can justify this as a valid excuse considering all international flights fill up locally with the imported fuel. When looking at this story I noticed another story discussing ACSA who is the Airports Company South Africa who is Government owned and they run the airports. ACSA is on the brink of liquidation which also means they need more money and the only way they can do this is by charging airlines more money to use their services.
When I travelled overseas earlier this year I noticed that the airlines only make around 60% of the ticket price and the rest is made up of taxes and service related charges. This is why they charge for luggage these days as they are being charged extra by the airports. This used to be automatically built into the ticket prices because who travels overseas or on holiday without a suit case?
I know from my time dealing with ACSA they are poorly run and have buffer managers doing the work of managers shielding them as they have no clue ad ae political positions handed to friends and family. This was never a business that was expected to make any profit and was more for milking ,yet it is a printing machine if run properly. They have a captured market and no competition so how can they be in financial crisis? Every person travelling internally is now paying the price for their inefficiencies and the local airlines are having to keep quiet.
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