Direct flights between São Paulo and Cape Town to be relaunched in October

Cape Town will see its first direct connection to South America in over a decade, as South African Airways is set to launch its first intercontinental flights since the Covid -19 lockdown.

The new direct and first flight service between Cape Town and São Paulo in Brazil will be reinstated on October 31, 2023.

According to Alderman Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth the campaign’s activation in the South American country follows its massive success in the US market where it saw more than 23 million impressions, surpassing campaign reach and impressions targets by over 500% on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. 

Prior to that, the campaign ran in European cities including London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Zurich and Berlin, where it received more than 25 million views, exceeding its target by three million views.  

‘This is one of the measures we use to push demand from key source markets that leads to increased bookings. Between January and April 2023, we saw inbound travel from these markets surpass figures seen for the same period in 2019. UK air passengers recovered to 104% of the January to April 2019 numbers, Germany hit 106%, the Netherlands recovered to 116%, and the USA reached an incredible 155%. Our aim with taking this campaign to Brazil is to encourage such positive sentiment that converts to bookings,’ said Alderman Vos.

In April Alderman James Vos and Cape Town Tourism CEO, Enver Duminy met with various airline executives, tourism bodies and investment agencies in Brazil to present Cape Town’s unique value proposition and destination offer, and made a case for a direct flight that would allow for easy access to and from this important source market. The Air Access team at Wesgro engaged with aviation stakeholders over a long period to prepare the route. Brazil is South Africa’s biggest trading partner in Latin America and in terms of tourism. With this new direct flight, relations between the two regions will be enhanced,trade will be boosted bringing more South American tourists to Cape Town which will benefit the city’s economy and work towards creating a tourism-related job in every household. 

 ‘Now that this route is ready to take off, we will get to work keeping it in the skies and driving increased destination marketing to attract more South American travellers to our shores. It gives me great pleasure to see this flight confirmed and my team and I will keep working to establish further connectivity between these and other source markets and Cape Town,’ said Alderman Vos.