You've got to hand it to domestic airlines kulula.com and 1Time - and not just for introducing an element of advertising humour to cattle-class travel. They've taken the nasty out of "cheap and nasty" and made no-frills flying almost appealing, as well as more affordable. But even when sourcing a rock-bottom fare from a budget carrier, you need to be a canny customer, or you might lose your sense of humour.
There can't be too many things more frustrating than trying to buy the bargain ticket you saw advertised on TV or in a travel agent's shop window, only to be told that it's a one-way fare or "all seats at that price are sold". Unless one of them is to buy that cheap seat, only to have your flight delayed for two hours, miss a connecting flight and have no recourse whatsoever, because every restriction in the book applies to your cut-price ticket.
When buying an air ticket, you need to understand that you're entering into a contract - and, as with every contract, you should read the fine print. That applies to all airlines, including the budget carriers.
You should also realise that the cheapest deal is not always the best deal. The best deal for you is the one that best suits your needs. The cheapest deal may suit you if you're flying to a holiday destination, are flexible about flight times, and are confident that once you book, you won't need to make changes to your itinerary. But, if you're travelling for business and might need to reschedule to accommodate extra meetings or stopovers, there's little point in booking months in advance to secure a cheap restrictive fare.
"Cheap can turn out to be very expensive," Wally Gaynor, the managing director of budget travel specialists Club Travel, says. "It's pointless buying a cheap ticket with a 100 percent cancellation fee and no changes allowed if there is the slightest chance that you will have to change or cancel your booking."
According to the airlines, if you want the cheapest deal on a domestic flight, book as far in advance as possible - if not on the airlines' websites, then through their call centres.
Kulula isn't called kulula. com for nothing. The company wants you to book online, and booking at the budget airline's ticket sales kiosk in an airport will cost you R25 more per person per flight than it would to book electronically.
Gaynor concedes that online is often the cheapest way to book, but cautions that bargains can be had from travel agents, too, through the short-term specials they put together with specific airlines.
If you don't have the patience or the inclination to trawl the net for a bargain, a good travel agent can do it for you, but be prepared to pay a booking fee of between R30 and R100.
Fickle figures
So, which airline offers the cheapest fares? For the purpose of this article, the writer went online to source a return flight between Cape Town and Johannesburg from kulula.com, 1Time ( www.1time.aero), Nationwide ( www.flynationwide.co.za) and SA Airways ( www.flysaa.com). The search (or potential booking) was conducted on August 24 for a flight to leave Cape Town on Saturday morning, October 23, and return from Johannesburg on Monday morning, October 25.
And the winner was kulula.com, coming in at R918 inclusive of VAT and airport taxes. (Always ensure the fare being offered is all-inclusive, with no hidden costs such as airport/insurance surcharges or a call centre charge.) SAA came in second at R995, followed by 1Time at R1 062 and Nationwide at R1 192. The difference between the cheapest and the most expensive fare was R274.
Given the two-month lead-time, one could be forgiven for expecting cheaper deals, especially considering the advertised fares. Browse the travel supplements in the weekend newspapers and you are likely to find tempting, but elusive, offers of return flights between Cape Town and Johannesburg "from" R678 and between Johannesburg and Durban "from" R638, as well as one-way flights from Cape Town to Johannesburg "from" R314.
Ten days later, the writer repeated the above exercise. It only demonstrated the fickleness of the industry. 1Time's fare had dropped from R1 062 to R880, Kulula's fare had increased to R1 088 and Nationwide's had remained the same. SAA's website was down for maintenance.
Gidon Novick, the executive director of kulula.com, says kulula's lowest fares are available on about 25 percent of seats. But keep an eye on kulula's specials, such as its recent birthday special of R666 for a return flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, George or Port Elizabeth. A return ticket from Johannesburg to Durban could be got for R466.
SAA says it recently changed its domestic fare structure "to make it easier for customers to understand how and where to get the cheapest fares" on its network. Presumably, this was in response to competition from the budget airlines. Bulelwa Koyana, SAA's regional general manager of direct sales, says SAA's cheapest fares now come with an advance-purchase requirement of just a 10 days.
SAA's cheapest return between Johannesburg and Durban at the time of writing was R581 (including VAT, but excluding airport and other taxes). SAA declined to disclose how many of these cheap seats were/are available.
According to Koyana, this fare is not a promotional offer and is here to stay. "Therefore specials below these fare levels are likely to occur," she added.
But the national carrier does offer some tips for bargain hunters. Rich Mkondo, SAA's executive manager of corporate communications, says you can save yourself as much as 65 percent by being selective about the timing of your flight. "Certain days, such as Tuesdays and Wednesdays, are often the best for obtaining discount fares, and Monday is the next best day to travel. The time of day can also be important." Don't expect a cheap fare if you want to fly early in the morning or late in the afternoon. You are more likely to find a discounted fare on a midday or an evening flight.
The cheapest return flight on 1Time is R562 on the Johannesburg-Durban route. (1Time does not fly between Cape Town and Durban.) Rodney James, the director of marketing and operations at 1Time, says discounted fares such as this are available "on various flights on most days in different quantities". He says these fares sell quickly, so it's advisable to book online well in advance or through 1Time's call centre.
1Time advertises its most expensive fares, instead of advertising its cheapest fares, as do the other airlines (for example, "from" R678). By advertising its most expensive fares, you can rest assured that you will never be in for more than the advertised fare. It may, in fact, cost you less. This method of marketing is great and perhaps it's churlish to think that advertising one-way fares, when everyone else is advertising returns, is potentially misleading.
All in all, our investigation only proved that it's near-impossible to say which airline is the cheapest, as ticket prices vary from day to day in line with supply and demand, yield control and various other factors. The only certainties are that you should book as early as you can, do so online if possible, be flexible regarding flying times and dates and be prepared to hunt.
And just to confuse the issue further, if you can't book early, you might be better off booking late. The very best fares may be offered at the very last minute, when certain airlines slash their prices to fill an empty aircraft, in a bid to cover their costs.
The international route
The internet may be your first port of call to source a discounted domestic flight, but don't expect the net to find you the best deal on an international flight.
Gaynor says that the internet can only cope with basic point-to-point international bookings and is not yet sophisticated enough to handle complicated bookings. "International airlines departing from South Africa still distribute most of their good deals through travel agents."
Gaynor says good, knowledgeable travel agents can beat the internet international fare 95 percent of the time, because they know where to look and what to ask, whereas a computer will only do what you tell it to do. "The other bonus is that a travel agent can do much more than book your ticket, such as organise your visas, car hire, hotel reservations and so on."
This article was first published in Personal Finance magazine, 4th Quarter 2004. See what's in our latest issue