Mango not so cheap after all
Johannesburg - Mango Airlines said on Wednesday it had made aviation history in South Africa by selling in excess of 130 000 tickets during its first week of operation, equating to 698 aircraft at full capacity.
The airline said it had sold, on average, more than 18 000 tickets a day since launching seven days ago.
"In response to demand, Mango also has made more low-fare tickets available on the Johannesburg/Durban, Cape Town/Durban/Bloemfontein routes," said the company and added that the low-cost airline was inspired by the public's response to its entry into the market.
Chief executive Nico Bezhuidenhout said he believed Mango also had achieved a "near-instant injection of energy in the aviation market" with the incumbent no-frills airlines responding by lowering their prices to undercut it.
One such airline that responded immediately by undercutting Mango was kulula.com, which lowered "some" of its tickets to R168 one way on the routes on which Mango would be operating while complaining that "only airlines that have no motive to make a profit" can afford to do so.
1Time also lowered "a limited number" of its tickets to R165, undercutting Mango by R4 a trip.
Not engaging in price war
But, Bezhuidenhout says Mango has not entered the market to engage in a price war.
"Low-cost air travel is sustainable through the airline's innovative operational efficiencies, a young fleet of fuel-efficient and technologically advanced Boeing 737-800's, effective use of assets and more-efficient seating configurations," said Bezhuidenhout.
He initially promised that Mango's tickets, after the launch special of R169 one-way trip between Johannesburg and the coastal cities of Cape Town and Durban, would be at least 20% lower than those of closest competitors.
But a quick random test of the prices proved otherwise.
A booking made on Saturday, November 4, for a Johannesburg - Cape Town trip on December 19 and returning December 28 for three people proved at least R300 more expensive than the closest rival.
Similarly, for a return trip Fin24 booked while typing this story - using the cheapest available flights - Mango came out the most expensive of its low-cost peers.
A return between Johannesburg and Cape Town - flying down on December 19 and returning on December 27 is R1 498 at Mango while it is R1 458 with kulula.com and R1 358 on 1Time.
'Not an accurate tool for comparison'
A colleague of spokesperson Hein Kaiser's initially told Fin24 that Mango's normal prices would not be more than R600 for a one-way trip.
Confronted with a single CT-JHB price of R763.66 she sounded surprised and promised to get back to us.
When asked to comment, Kaiser initially said their prices were sustainable while their competitors had cut the prices to ward off the stiff competition.
But, when this writer challenged Kaiser and pointed out that the prices compared were regular prices for the other airlines, Kaiser later sent us a statement: "I would like to point out that Mango aims to, on average, be 20% more affordable than our competitors.
"What this means is that comparing flights - sector and time-specific - would not provide you with an accurate tool for comparison as, if you research pricing tiers that most airlines use to manage yield, your comparison may simply mean that Mango's lower fares have already been sold out and you may be comparing different pricing tiers against one another."
It beats us how it is possible not to get an accurate result when looking for the cheapest flights on specific dates at the same time, as we have done.
News source: www.news24.co.za
Posted by: www.SouthAfrica-CarHire.com
Shows how they were messing us around before?
Click Click... Vroom, Vroom
