Once upon a flight time, the Cape Town to Johannesburg route was the tenth busiest on this planet.
That was in 2012, when an Amadeus evaluation counted 4.4-million passengers between the 2 cities. It was the one African route within the high 10 and one in all solely three outdoors Asia, alongside Rio de Janeiro–São Paulo and Melbourne–Sydney.
It has since disappeared from the worldwide rating. The International Air Transport Association’s World Air Transport Statistics counted 3.4-million passengers between Cape Town International and OR Tambo International in 2025, down by 1 / 4, but nonetheless busy sufficient to retain first place in Africa.
“There are currently about 54 flights a day serving the route,” says Linden Birns, managing director of aviation consultancy Plane Talking. “FlySafair is the dominant carrier (on all major domestic routes) in terms of capacity and frequency. Airlink, Lift, Cemair and SAA account for the balance.”
His schedule analysis places the route from Cape Town International to OR Tambo International Airport at about 301 one-way flights per week in every path, with one other 100 or so between Cape Town and Lanseria. FlySafair now accounts for 67% of South African home seat capability and operates the one Cape Town–Lanseria providers.
The passenger rely comes from IATA’s World Air Transport Statistics, constructed on direct airline reporting.
It places three different native routes in Africa’s high 5: Durban–OR Tambo, Cape Town–Durban and Cape Town–Lanseria. Abuja–Lagos is the one top-five pairing outdoors South Africa.
Adding the Cape Town-Lanseria and Cape Town OR Tambo numbers would push the general route again over 4-million, however not by sufficient to reclaim a high 10 rating. The world has moved on, actually.
Tenth place globally final yr was shared by Mumbai–Delhi and Beijing–Shanghai, every with about 5.5-million passengers. The world chief, Jeju–Seoul Gimpo in South Korea, carried 13.3-million. In 2012, its whole had been 10.1-million.
Cape Town–Johannesburg additionally loved a really completely different airline business in 2012. SAA alone equipped 40% of South Africa’s home seat capability, and its low-cost subsidiary Mango added one other 10%.
Comair offered one other giant block of capability by means of its British Airways franchise and kulula.com. The low-cost airline 1time was additionally working when 2012 started, including one more funds choice.
SAA’s monetary disaster all however eradicated its position. It entered enterprise rescue in December 2019, stopped business providers through the pandemic and returned to the skies in September 2021 a shadow of its former fleet. Mango stopped flying in 2021. Comair collapsed the next yr, eradicating British Airways home flights and kulula.com on the identical time.
Airports Company South Africa later blamed capability constraints and better fares for a gradual home restoration, however that was clearly solely half the story, because it was left to FlySafair, Airlink, Lift, CemAir and the smaller SAA to revive the flight path.
The 3.4-million passengers nonetheless work out at greater than 9,300 a day between Cape Town International and OR Tambo, earlier than Lanseria visitors is included. Lanseria provides one other twist, says Birns: “The fastest-growing route in Africa in 2025 was Durban – Johannesburg Lanseria with 430,000 passengers, representing 24.8% year-on-year growth from 2024.”
The mixture of airways overlaying all these routes makes for an enchanting dynamic: FlySafair’s Boeing 737s and Lift’s Airbus A320s carry giant blocks of passengers, whereas Airlink’s Embraer fleet and CemAir’s regional jets enable smaller allocations of seats. SAA primarily makes use of Airbus A320s.
The combine offers airways completely different instruments for matching plane dimension to demand. On a route with departures all through the day, that may imply a missed flight isn’t a catastrophe. Flying from Johannesburg to Polokwane on a 30-seater signifies that lacking one in all solely two morning departures can lead to an extended anticipate the one different flight of the day.
Rebooking a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, however, can lead to the completely happy misfortune of selecting the occasional second SAA places an Airbus A330-300 onto the route: the widebody has to maneuver between Johannesburg and Cape Town for the airline’s twice-weekly São Paulo service. The crucial plane motion turns into a home flight with seats on the market, giving startled passengers a long-haul cabin on a two-hour journey.
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, Editor of GadgetWIngs, and writer of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.