South African low cost airline Mango, part of the State-owned South African Airways group, announced on Monday that it is to initiate a new route between Gauteng’s Lanseria International Airport and Durban in October and will add another flight on its Lanseria/Cape Town route. Lanseria lies south-west of Pretoria and north-west of Johannesburg.

“Demand at Lanseria has shown welcome growth over the past 24 months with well performing load factors across the schedule and we expect the additional Cape Town flight as well as the the new Durban route to mirror performance at Lanseria and further stimulate growth,” stated Mango spokesperson Hein Kaiser. The new Durban route will be operated twice daily, while the new Cape Town frequency is an early morning flight from Cape Town to Lanseria.

The additional flights will also mean that Mango will be making greater use of its aircraft. “A fundamental cornerstone of low cost aviation is asset utilisation; if you are not flying, you are not earning,” he explained. “Mango holds the lowest cost base in the domestic market and additional frequencies and network expansion further reduces input costs.”

The airline reported that it has been listed several times as being one of the top five airlines in the world in terms of asset utilisation and efficiency. During the past six months Mango has flown a monthly average of 1 500 flights, carrying 220 000 passengers, resulting in an average load factor of 82%.

“Mango is geared for further growth,” he stated. “While trading conditions remain tough and some competitors have had to adopt a flexible schedule as a consequence, our average load factors have shown that there remains opportunity for business development, in particular our expansion out of Lanseria.”

The airline intends to employ more aircraft on its operations before the end of this year. More acquisitions and increased operations are planned for the next two years. Mango has been operating scheduled services out of Lanseria for five years now. These complement flights between Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport and Cape Town and between OR Tambo and Durban. Other Mango destinations are Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth and George. The airline operates Boeing 737-800 airliners, with a passenger capacity of 186 each.