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- Nothing erases the joy of bagging the cheapest airfare than a long airport delay.
- If you're on a tight schedule, or plan to spend as little time as possible in the departures terminal, one local airline is consistently better than all others.
- The rest are all pretty punctual, too - but there's one airline to avoid if you want to give yourself the best chance to arrive on time.
- For more travel stories, visit the News24 Life travel page.
When buying tickets on South Africa's domestic airlines, pricing is likely the factor of most importance. But even the joy of bagging the cheapest airfare can't erase the pain of airport delays.
Given the persistent rise of ticket prices in a post-lockdown, post-low-cost airline South Africa, it's understandable if most of us are sorting airline search results by cost.
But there's a booking detail not included in airline ticket aggregators, and often conveniently ignored by the airlines themselves, that may be equally or more important than price - and that's on-time performance.
Although it's no guarantee of zero delays, on-time performance is a reliable indicator of whether you'll be spending the first day of your holiday surfing channels on your airport hotel TV or sipping your first G&Ts at your all-inclusive lodge. And as reticent as all but the most punctual airlines are to make this information public, the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) is quite happy to hold them accountable.
ACSA reports on-time performance details for each airline at each airport monthly. They calculate this by comparing what time the plane actually pushes out of the bay and returns to it versus what time they promised you it would - with an allowance for 15 minutes deviation on either side.
ACSA calculates this for every airline at every major airport in South Africa, which is a useful when planning a trip - particularly one that requires you to arrive depart and arrive on time.
South Africa's most punctual airlines
If you want to give yourself the best chance of an on-time departure in 2023, you're better off booking your next domestic flight with Airlink. This year, Airlink has achieved an on-time percentage of 95.47% at all reporting airports it flies to - and 96.63% to the country's major airports.
Lift is in second place with an average on-time performance of 93.89%.
FlySafair is close behind with 93.75%.
And SAA's on-time performance isn't much worse, at 92.42%.
The worst-performing airline as far as on-time performance goes is currently CemAir, which achieves an on-time performance of 83.65% at major airports, and 82.10% at all airports it flies to.
Which airlines fare best at major South African airports
O.R. Tambo International Airport
The most punctual airline at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport is Airlink, which has achieved 96.25% on-time performance this year.
The least punctual airline at O.R. Tambo International is CemAir, which is floundering at 78.14%.
The remaining airlines South African Airways, FlySafair, and Lift, sit between the two with on-time performance around the 92% mark.
Cape Town International Airport
Airlink is once again the most punctual airline at Cape Town International, with an on-time performance of 97.12% this year.
CemAir is once again the airline with the poorest performance, with a record of 88.16%.
FlySafair, Lift, and SAA are much closer to Airlink in Cape Town, with performance hovering around the 94% mark.
King Shaka International Airport
Similar patterns appear at King Shaka International Airport. Airlink has an on-time performance of 96.53% for 2023, whereas CemAir sits at 84.65%. Lift is close behind Airlink with 95.83%, followed by FlySafair (94.33%) and SAA with 91.08%.
