The new budget South African airline, Mango, has stirred up the airline industry in South Africa with its drastic drop in prices. This development has been very interesting and the opinions differ on the consequence for air travel in Africa.

Lately discussion has heated up between the several airlines and experts in the industry on this development, making it hard for consumers to understand all the fuss.

Even one of our readers e-mailed us the other day saying ‘what is going on with Mango?’.

Aggresive Pricing = Cheap Flights

So far it is clear that Mango has opted for a strategy of aggressive pricing and is not afraid to offer extremely low prices. This has revolutionized air travel in the rest of the world and therefore it is good to see this development in Africa.

The only ‘but’ in this case would be that Mango is a sister-company of SA Airways, which is also owned by the government. So in a way the taxpayer is paying for all the “cheap flights SAA flights”.
Future for air travel and Mango

I am still not convinved that the introduction of Mango is a positive step for SAA, as they might just be canabalising their own full-fair flights as I mentioned in a previous posts (and incorrectly speculated the name of the airline to be “Tulca”).

I do belive there is an overall plus to the consumer and the South African travel industry however: Mango’s added competition will push the low cost carriers like kulula.com and 1time to maintain their low prices. Further, the marketing spend of Mango should raise awareness of low-cost flights in the public domain and hopefully inspire more low-to-middle income earners in South Africa to start flying!

- Andre

Last 5 posts by Andre Van Kets

• Google Goes Green - June 29th, 2007
• Happy New Year - January 4th, 2007
• Check out our sponsor ad, and the Wavescape Film Festival Schedule! - December 6th, 2006
• UPDATING Africa Travel Guide - November 26th, 2006
• Africa Travel Guide loving Flickr - November 25th, 2006

This Article’s Popularity: 27%

del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Help

RSS for this article