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South Africa is soon to welcome its new domestic carrier. The airline ‘Velvet Sky’ is locally based airline holding its hub in Durban, the famous port city of South Africa.

Velvet Sky Airline is aimed at providing cheap flights to Johannesburg, Cape Town and its home city Durban. It will be a low cost airline that will make flying easier for travelers arriving at Johannesburg or Cape Town and looking for onward connections. At present, the national flagship carrier of the country South African Airways is mainly operating the local and regional routes as well. South African Airways also connects Johannesburg with neighbor Harare, Zimbabwe.  While the International flights with South African airways is second to British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in providing International direct flights to Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban from London Heathrow Airport.

This new coming airline will add to the existing domestic and regional flights on the route. As the cost of transportation increases, traveling by air between neighboring African countries has become more affordable and time saving. However, this is by dint of a rising competition in the region. The competing airlines such as between Johannesburg and Harare include Air Zimbabwe, South African Airways, British Airways and South African Airlink. The same competition continues on Lusaka, Nairobi, Lagos, Abuja and various other routes in Africa.

The competition on the African routes will reach a new level after the launch of flights by Velvet Sky, as the airline has stated that it is looking forward to take flight ticket prices close to that of some intercity bus ticket fares.

Further to that Velvet Sky CEO Mr. Reddy expressed that selecting Durban as the home and hub of Velvet Sky is also for the same reason as this city offers lower costs and being situated away from the main competition cities, Durban flights operations are an easy start for the rising carrier.

Velvet Sky also plans to operate flights to other African cities in Future. Mr. Cecil Reddy is the Chairman of Velvet Sky Airline and also CEO of Macdonald Holdings, private sector steel and engineering group. Mr. Reddy said that Velvet Sky is launched keeping in view the limited capacity and increasing demand on the Africa regional and domestic route. The airline has announced the first flight to take on from coming Tuesday. Initially, the airline will be outsourcing its first Boeing 737 from International leasing company Aergo, followed by two more aircrafts to be phased after demand analysis. The airline will operate within South Africa in the beginning and only limited to Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.