South African Airways has been awarded with the “Best Airline in Africa” and “Best Cabin Crew in Africa” prizes at the World Airline Awards.

The awards based on the yearly World Airline Survey conducted by Skytrax measures over 35 different aspects of passenger satisfaction for an airline’s product and service standards, and is recognized as being a global, independent survey that handle over 15 million passengers’ feedback regarding airline standards.

SAA’s recent upgrade of the A340-300 and -600 aircraft contributed to its success at the awards. SAA now offers 29 extra titles on its in-flight movies list, ranging from popcorn blockbusters to culturally diverse options including South African and Hindi choices.

The upgraded aircraft operate SAA’s service form Washington and New York to Johannesburg and each seat on board includes a personal, on-demand entertainment system with the full range of upgraded content, as well as good quality food, complementary South African wine and amenity kits.

SAA offers the only non-stop service form the U.S. to South Africa with daily departures form Washington D.C and New York.

“Travellers in premium class enjoy 180 degree fully flat-bed seats, and in economy class enjoy the most legroom versus competitors.” SAA said in a statement earlier this week.

SAA also received the “Best Airline to Africa” award by Executive Travel Magazine and Weekly Globe Awards.

“We continue to be honoured by the fact that our customers and industry colleagues are recognizing our efforts to offer the best service to Africa,” said Marc Cavaliere, Executive Vice President, North America for South African Airways. “One can’t go wrong by working tirelessly to improve one’s service and offerings, and we continue to work to that end.”

Source: www.modernoptimist.co.za

• Botswana - Gaborone (Sir Seretse Khama Airport)
• Namibia - Windhoek (Hosea Kutako Airport)

South Africa

• Cape Town (Cape Town Airport) Hub
• Durban (Durban Airport)
• East London (East London Airport)
• Johannesburg (OR Tambo Airport) Hub
• Port Elizabeth (Port Elizabeth Airport)

SAA's Aircrafts
SAA's aircrafts assures their passengers of comfort, reliability, modern interiors ans technologically advanced features. In 2006 all their aircrafts, except for the A319 and B737-800 range, were fitted with lie-flat seats for even more comfort. They apply very high safety standards in maintaining their passenger aircrafts with an average age of five years.

Some of SAA's aircrafts have lie-flat seat that offers you 24 inch width in flat bed position and are made of a combination of leather and fabric. Each passenger has a personal reading light with four variable settings. While seated in comfort with enough leg rest, passengers can view the latest blockbuster movies on a llarge 10.4 inch touch screen.

South African Cargo is the airline's freight branch that operates cargo services with a Boeing 737-200F and a 737-300QC to domestic and regional destinations.

SAA's Alliance
South African Airlines has formed a strong alliance with South African Airlink and South African Express. Although these other two airlines operate independantly of SA Airways, their flights are incorporated within the alliance and they all use SAA's reservations and check-in facilities.

South African Airlink
South African Airlink Airways operates as a franchisee of South African Airways but using its own visible brand. Airlink links smaller towns to the major city hubs and was placed on the IATA Register in February 2008. They have 28 destinations in the SADC sub-region, 3500 flights per month and carries almost 1 million passengers per annum.

South African Express
In April 1994, SA Express Airways became part of the strong South African Airways Alliance and also one of the fastest growing domestic and regional airlines in Africa. They are a regional airline with route networks covering most of the major local and regional cities. The airline caters for the business and the leisure traveler by offering flights within South Africa as well as services between Botswana, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.