Publications
Partners
- Discovery Bank and Visa show in their latest report that the best time to fly to coastal areas like Cape Town or Durban is early on Sundays, with the worst time to fly there being Friday afternoons.
- Wednesday evenings, meanwhile, are the cheapest to fly to Johannesburg from both Cape Town and Durban.
- Domestic ticket prices also appear to be steadying, with certain routes even seeing some prices coming down.
- For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.
The old proverb about the early bird catching the worm certainly rings true when it comes to securing the cheapest possible flights.
A survey of credit card spending on local airplane tickets shows that travellers wanting to get the best flight deals for their stretched wallets will have to drag themselves out of bed in the early hours of the morning.
The data forms part of 2024 SpendTrend report, which tracked credit card spending behaviour globally.
The report used Visa's dataset of more than 60 million credit cards across the world, covering in excess of 13 billion transactions between 2019 and 2023.
For the South African survey, data from Discovery Bank was also used.
According to the report, the cheapest time slot for those wanting to fly to Cape Town from Johannesburg is 05:00 on Sunday, with the cheapest day overall for a flight to the Mother City being a Tuesday.
The reverse is true if you are returning to the Big Smoke, with the best time for a good flight deal being 21:00 on a Wednesday.
Unsurprisingly, the most expensive time slot to travel to Cape Town from Johannesburg is 16:00 on a Friday, while the most costly slot for a flight to Jozi from there is a Sunday at noon.
There is a similar trend for travel between Johannesburg and Durban, with the cheapest flight to Durban being 06:00 on a Sunday.
The best price for a one-way flight to Johannesburg from Durban is also 21:00 on a Wednesday. The most expensive time slot for a flight to Durban is 13:00 on a Friday, while the most costly flight to Johannesburg from that city is 16:00 on a Sunday.
Johannesburg to Cape Town
Cape Town to Johannesburg
Durban to Johannesburg
Johannesburg to Durban
And while some may balk at the idea of getting up at a time when sparrows are fast asleep, there is some good news too – domestic flight prices overall seem to be stabilising and even coming down on some routes.
The report shows that on popular local routes, flight prices have "steadied and even decreased from 2022 after a notable increase from 2019".
The same, however, cannot be said for international flights, with price hikes on many global routes in 2023 due to increasing demand.
When it comes to domestic one-way flights, the average cost for a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town in 2023 was R1 700, slightly down on the R1 720 average flight cost in 2022. Flights to Durban from Johannesburg fell a more substantial 5% to R1 040 from R1 090 in 2022. An average one-way flight from Cape Town to George came in about 3% lower in 2023 at R1 720 from R1 780 in 2022.
But flights from Cape Town to Durban, however, rose 2% to R1 810 from R1 770 in 2022.
Travelling from George to Johannesburg is also much more expensive, with an 11% increase in average one-way flights to R1 760 from R1 580 in 2022.
International travellers saw big increases, with a one-way ticket to popular island destination Mauritius increasing by an eye-watering 70% to R10 840 in 2023, from R6 390 in 2022. Travel to the UK was also much pricier, with a 26% increase in ticket prices to R20 510 in 2023, from R16 340 in 2022.
Those travelling to Australia saw a one-way ticket soaring 23% to R32 190 from R26 200 in 2022. Discovery Bank and Visa also underlined other interesting domestic travel trends, including the fact that not only Cape Town is benefitting from the surge in semigration.
The SpendTrend24 report showed that the movement of people from inland areas to cities along the Garden Route has also led to increased travel to East London, George and Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth).
It found that domestic travel generally centred along SA’s "golden triangle", with Cape Town being the top destination, followed by Johannesburg, and then Durban.
Similar to global trends, the report also showed that South Africans were increasingly engaging in "bleisure" travel, combining business trips with leisure activities by extending their stays and taking advantage of remote work opportunities.
