{"id":456030,"date":"2020-12-10T08:54:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T06:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=456030"},"modified":"2020-12-10T08:54:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T06:54:13","slug":"new-south-african-airline-lift-starts-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/456030\/new-south-african-airline-lift-starts-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"New South African airline Lift starts flying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa\u2019s new domestic airline Lift started flights on Thursday (10 December) as it aims to carve out space in an industry that has been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>The low-cost carrier will offer two routes as part of its initial offering \u2013 Johannesburg to Cape Town, and Johannesburg to George.<\/p>\n<p>The airline is owned by Johannesburg-based leasing company Global Airways and will operate three Airbus SE A320 jets on these routes.<\/p>\n<p>Co-founder Gidon Novick told <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/454896\/south-africa-newest-airline-will-fly-despite-an-industry-in-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bloomberg<\/a> <\/strong>that the airline is looking to take advantage of plunging startup costs due to an oversupply of planes due to the collapse in demand and low oil prices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The opportunity is here now to go into the consumer airline space \u2014 especially given the current environment,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The current cost structures are about 40% lower than what it would have cost to start an airline before the coronavirus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The new airline\u2019s staff are kitted out by the online fashion retailer Superbalist and travellers are treated to coffee from Vida e Caff\u00e8 on morning flights.<\/p>\n<p>Afternoon flights feature wine tasting from a selection of South Africa\u2019s top wineries, which Novick said will give valuable exposure to South Africa\u2019s top wine farms.<\/p>\n<p>Ticket prices start at R525, but Novick said he expects these prices to increase as demand for flights grows. &#8220;Prices will go up. There is currently an oversupply in the market which drives prices down. That will change over time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Novick has said that the new airline is not planning to engage in a price war with other domestic airlines like Kulula and FlySafair. &#8220;Cutting prices is not a sustainable strategy. It is easy to do, but everyone will then lose money.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said that customers\u2019 payments will be kept in a separate structure until after the flights are flown \u2014 to avoid them losing money in the event the airline goes bust. This is a departure from industry norms globally, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s our basic belief that customers should not fund airlines and neither should governments,\u201d he said. \u201cNo rational argument has been put forward that gives anybody confidence that it is necessary to put money into SAA that should have been invested in social projects and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/455546\/south-africa-opens-new-battle-with-unions-over-airline-salaries\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">South Africa opens new battle with unions over airline salaries<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa\u2019s new domestic airline Lift begun flights on Thursday (10 December) as it aims to carve out space in an industry that has been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":456040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,8818],"class_list":["post-456030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-lift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456030"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456050,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456030\/revisions\/456050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}