Category: this is south africa

Cape Town third most popular with BA customers

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After SAA withdrew their daily Cape Town – London flights last year, citing lack of demand, British Airways has announced that the route is its third most popular, behind New York and Miami, but notably ahead of the international hubs of Dubai and Hong Kong.

Out of 175 destinations worldwide, only New York and Miami attracted more bookings than Cape Town, with Dubai the fourth most popular choice and Hong Kong the fifth.

Yeah – that’s what I just said.

Anyway, the apparent upshot of this news is that Cape Town may well be among the first cities to see BA’s new Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” aircraft, which are due for delivery in May this year.

BA’s Dreamliners will be configured to carry 214 passengers, with 35 seats in business class, 25 in economy plus and 154 in economy.
Not only will they have the latest Thales in-flight entertainment system, with larger screens in all cabins, but they will also allow personal devices, including laptops, to be connected, using in-seat power.

Which is all very nice, but doesn’t really make sense to me, given that this is one of their most popular routes and that the Boeing 747-400s which BA currently uses on the CPT-LHR route can carry almost twice as many passengers as the Dreamliner.

Here’s a really popular route. Let’s immediately halve the capacity of our flights on it.

How very SAA.

And for those of you who are wondering why BA doesn’t go the other ways and use something really huge, like an A380 on the Cape Town run, it’s because BA don’t own any A380s at the moment (they’ll get their first one in August) (yes, I was shocked at this too). And even if they did, Cape Town’s runway is too short to accommodate the big Airbus.

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While Air France and Lufthansa both use A380s on their Joburg routes, the only sight Cape Town gets of them is during ceremonial flyovers.

Cool Flight

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It was an emotional time for family 6000 yesterday afternoon, as we said goodbye to Grandma and Granddad, who were (well, are, actually) flying back to the UK via Dubai. Checking on their check in though, I spotted this:

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Yes, at 2330 yesterday evening, you could get a flight from Cape Town to Amsterdam or… Antarctica.
Who knew?

Better make sure you get on the right plane to avoid confusion though:

Hey. Shomething ish not right. Why ish dare sho much shnow at Schipol?
Where are the buildingsh? And where did doze penguinsh come from?

The whole destination thing is a bit vague, and since the total area of Antarctica is 14,000,000km², you might find yourself some distance from the bit of Antarctica you actually want to be in, but on the plus side, at least you’re virtually guaranteed a daylight landing.

Beautiful phone, beautiful city

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As these things do, my “new” Sony Xperia T smartphone – the flagship of the Xperia range – has been superseded by the new flagship of the Xperia range, the Xperia Z. It is an absolutely beautiful device, and the advert is filmed in Cape Town, which (obviously) is also absolutely beautiful.
Together, these two facts make it unavoidable blog fodder:

To be honest, aside from a slightly larger screen (not something I wanted anyway) and a couple of video enhancements on the Z, it does appear that there’s not an awful lot to choose between the two handsets, and thus I remain very happy with my phone.

UPDATE: Dammit. Just seen that it has 2GB RAM. OK, that’s quite a lot to choose. But I still remain very happy with my phone.
*seethes quietly*

In terms of units sold, Sony certainly isn’t Samsung just yet, but once users onto the fact that it keeps producing really, really good top-end mobile hardware like this, surely its market share will deservedly increase.

Three times nothing is still nothing…

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I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations again.

During January – November 2012 (remember back then?), I was stopped a total of zero times in roadblocks in and around Cape Town. But hey, I’m an individual case with a propensity to stay home with my family on Saturday nights, so maybe that – while demonstrating that if I had been doing anything naughty on the roads (which I wasn’t), I would have got away with it – is actually fine.

Then, early last month, we were informed in an interview by Robin Carlisle, MEC for Transport in the Western Cape, on a local radio station that motorists were “three times more likely” to be stopped in a roadblock in the province during the “holiday season”. During that “holiday season”, I racked up well over 2,000km on the roads of the Western Cape. I was stopped a total of zero times.

Those rudimentary mathematicians among you will have already done the sums (or read the title of the post) and worked out, like me, that Robin was absolutely right.
The upshot of his worryingly accurate prediction has been a 6% increase in the number of deaths on the Western Cape roads during December, something Robin refers to as “disheartening”.

I’m well aware that the issues of drink driving, dangerous driving, cellphone use and not using seatbelts should be negated by sensible and responsible individual choices. Sadly, we also all know that that’s not going to happen.

But that aside, as we have mentioned many times before, it’s all very well for the authorities to go making these promises and commitments, but unless they’re actually going to back them up with solid action, things are not going to improve.