Airlines Emirates and FlySafair announce interline agreement

Emirates and FlySafair have signed an interline agreement, which will allow the airlines to strengthen their travel options in South Africa. The agreement opens up connections for customers on selected routes.

With the arrangement in place, Emirates and FlySafair are planning to offer single-ticket travel to its customers, as well as the opportunity of through tagging baggage for customers that are flying through Emirates´ gateways in Cape Town, Durban or Johannesburg.

Customers will also be able to connect through FlySafair´s points without backtracking to their initial destination when catching a flight back to Dubai.

Kirby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer at FlySafair commented: “Today, we are excited to announce the launch of our interline agreement with Emirates Airline. The superb service and vast route network that Emirates offers is world-renowned, and we are proud to have partnered with them in providing customers greater connectivity when travelling.”

Badr Abbas, Senior Vice President Commercial Operations for Emirates in Africa added: “We are pleased to begin our interline partnership with FlySafair. Their network complements our South African presence, providing an array of connections for our customers, which makes this a natural partnership. Together, we will open up new travel opportunities, and more choice for customers wishing to travel domestically. We look forward to working together and strengthening our relationship into the future."

Currently, Emirates is operating 17 weeks flights into South Africa, after the links to Johannesburg were opened on October 1st and to Durban on October, 8th.

Regarding restart of operations at FlySafair, Gordon stated: “We are in a very fortunate position whereby we were able to restart operations in June this year. As of November, we will be operating at our full capacity again, which will see us operating just over 75% of the available domestic seat capacity in South Africa.”

FlySafair is a South African low-cost carrier, which is part of the ASL Aviation Group. The airline was founded in 2013 and currently has a fleet of eight Boeing 737-400s and 11 Boeing 737-800s, of which two are currently parted due to the pandemic.

Emirates is one of the largest long-haul airlines in the world and operates passenger and cargo flights with 114 Airbus A380s and 114 Boeing 777s.