Mango lightens the load

Cape Town – Mango, SAA’s low-cost airline, warned yesterday that it was tightening up on the amount of carry-on luggage it would allow. Passengers were also asked to lighten all checked-in baggage by an average of 1kg, thus keeping the weight of the aircraft as low as possible to save on fuel costs.A spokesperson for rival airline kulula.com admitted that it was considering charging for all checked-in luggage, as some low-cost airlines overseas were doing.

It was “undesirable that some passengers with little or no luggage should subsidise others”.

But Glenn Orsmond, the chief executive of 1time, said it intended to stick with charging only for excess baggage.

A travel industry executive said the extra charges were narrowing the gap between the costs of flying with low-cost airlines and full-service competitors, particularly when the latter offered special fares.

All airlines are struggling with high fuel prices, which have caused 25 airlines to close down recently.

Hein Kaiser, Mango’s communications manager, said South Africans had “a significant role to play in keeping flights affordable”.

If passengers packed 1kg less in each piece of checked-in luggage and kept hand luggage to a bare minimum, airlines could save thousands of rands a day on fuel.

Such fuel saving would make it possible for airlines to implement fewer or lower fare increases.

Mango would “become more vigilant when enforcing rules on excess baggage,” said Kaiser.

“Airlines cannot afford to be more lenient on overweight baggage any more. In the long run, passengers who pack a lot more cost more to transport and it can end up costing fellow passengers more too.”

In future, hand luggage weighing more than 7kg would have to be checked in or put in the front hold. Checked-in luggage would cost R25 for each kilogram over 20kg.

SAA’s year-end results are due tomorrow. It has already warned that it would show a loss, but said it was on track to be sustainably profitable by early next year.

Meanwhile, as airlines struggle with rising costs and an economic downturn, the two main aircraft manufacturers are doing well at Farnborough Air Show, with orders flowing in for cost-effective planes.

Airbus said its large backlog of orders, equivalent to six years of production, was expected to rise substantially during the show.

Boeing’s new Dreamliner plane was described as the most successful in attracting preproduction orders at its launch earlier this year.

Source: Business Report

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