Despite the setbacks of Covid-19 lockdowns and two airlines discontinuing flights into and out of Lanseria International Airport (LIA) in Gauteng, the facility is on the up again, with yet another airline adding to its scheduled flights to Cape Town and Durban.
The setbacks had reduced its belly cargo handling capacity to regional destinations to 20% of what it was pre-Covid when it handled about six to 10 tons of freight per month – mainly as overspill from operations at OR Tambo International Airport (Ortia) in Kempton Park.
The timeline of decline leading up to mid-2022 did paint a bleak picture.
SAA’s low-cost airline Mango decided a month before lockdown to consolidate all its operations out of OR Tambo.
Then Kulula, which had been bleeding financially, ceased flights on May 31, 2020, some of which were to LIA.
Two weeks later parent Comair was placed in provisional liquidation, which also affected British Airways internal flights in South Africa.
Even new entrant Lift is operating only on the lucrative Johannesburg-Cape Town route, although there is suspicion it may include the Johannesburg-Durban route as well. Whether it will choose to operate out of Lanseria for its future plans is not certain.
It has been rumoured that more than 20 parties expressed interest in Comair’s assets as part of the liquidation proceedings. This process has been extended to December this year.
In an exclusive interview with Freight News, operations manager for LIA, Mike Christoph said its general aviation (passenger and freight) operations were moving forward positively.
“We currently have six schedules, two to Durban and four to Cape Town, but there is a good chance other airlines will join us before the festive season.
“Another airline will be operating flights to Cape Town and Durban each day to help us increase freight capacity in the last quarter of this year, and we are at an advanced stage of clinching international daily freight services in about two years’ time.
“The airport will have to complete some infrastructure modifications which were stalled by Covid-19 for this to happen, but we are confident both a dedicated freight apron with warehousing will be in place to that end before 2025,” Christoph said.
An international cargo airline will service it with 777-sized aircraft with two flights a day. The nature of its freight has not been discussed yet. It will join dedicated daily freight operations to OR Tambo and Upington by Belgium-based Martin Air and LuxAir out of Luxembourg.
Apart from handling air cargo overspill from Ortia (handled by BidAir Cargo), and dedicated freighter and personnel flights for industry and country embassies, it also handles on average seven medevac flights each day within the Sadec region. A further two forwarding agents service its needs.
The records show that in 2019 the airport boasted a brand new R210-million multi-storey car parkade, with further plans for better road infrastructure and freight handling facilities in anticipation of demand.
“Currently all our freight is handled without any warehousing facilities, so it is an aircraft-to-truck and truck-to-aircraft operation. We handle some frozen foods for southern Africa on the same basis.”
BidAir Cargo does accept local freight to and from Lanseria, which is very important – particularly with regard to food, fish and pets. It is a faster service from there than at OR Tambo.
He said its mining-related cargo movement was showing an uptick, probably as a result of the mines having started investing more in infrastructure and maintenance again after the slowdown from March 2020.
Despite the seeming gloom, Sharmain Fourie actually established her company Enloade Customs and Handling Services during lockdown.
“Seems crazy but we got ourselves up and running based on a sound track record. It is hard and people were concerned about viability of the airport, but we deal with changing circumstances. It is that type of business as it is fast moving and will always have its problems,” she said.
