One of South Africa's newest airlines, LIFT, has hit on a clever way to raise its profile. Earlier this week, they had Cape Town Opera Company members singing in the aisle during a flight. Whether this is your cup of tea or not will probably depend on whether you enjoy opera and musical performances during your flight, but LIFT likely figures the inflight performance will get more thumbs up than thumbs down.
Inflight opera on a LIFT Airlines Airbus
LIFT, which only started flying in late 2020, keeps it simple with flights on just one route; Johannesburg (JNB) - Cape Town (CPT). They fly a pair of Airbus A320-200 aircraft (operated by Global Aviation on LIFT's behalf), so there wouldn't have been much room to move on the narrowbody jet for either the singers or the passengers.
LIFT's point of difference is what it calls flexible air travel. Regardless of ticket type, passengers can easily change or cancel flights. That sounds good, but there is one small catch. LIFT slings the credit or refund into an in-house digital wallet rather than back to a passenger's credit card or bank account, meaning the airline keeps hold of the cash, and the passenger can use the stored value for a future flight. That's hardly revolutionary.
Long time industry experience behind South Africa's newest airline
The man behind LIFT Airlines is called Gidon Novick. Mr Novick is a well-established airline industry figure in South Africa, having previously served as CEO of Comair. He also has a hands-off interest in the now majority privately owned South African Airways. It's no secret South Africa is a tough market to profitably fly in - the fates of South African Airways, Comair, and Mango Airlines point to that fact. But it is also an aviation market with big potential. But Mr Novick says over-capacity was a big problem in South Africa before the pandemic did its thing.
"As an industry, we make that mistake all too frequently by trying to create capacity that caters for the peak; responsible capacity is critical for the industry, including ourselves," he recently told South Africa's Biz News. "It is a slow, steady growth. And understanding the seasonality we inevitably have. We have very strong summer months in South Africa and then quite a big drop off over the winter period, which is critical."
Rising fuel prices putting upwards pressure on LIFT's ticket prices
That inflight opera performance is also a handy distraction from criticism LIFT is now financially benefiting from the demise of its competitors and raising ticket prices. One-way fares on the JNB - CPT route have reportedly risen from around R800 a year ago to between R3000 and R4000. Gidon Novick rejects suggestions LIFT is deliberately positioning to benefit from a sudden seat supply shortfall on South Africa's number one airline route. He says the increase in fuel costs is behind the fare rises.
"The current oil price makes air travel unaffordable to most people. Many people who could afford to fly a year ago cannot afford to fly now," Mr Novick argues. "Just to give you a sense: the return flight to Cape Town, just in terms of a seat cost, assuming we sell almost every seat on the flight, costs an airline about R3,000. And we are a pretty efficient airline. If you are paying less than R3,000, you must realize somebody else is subsidizing your seat in some way."
Unlike the inflight opera performance, that won't be music to the ears of most LIFT passengers.
Source: South Africa's Biz News