The first aircraft to don FlySafair’s new look is a Boeing 737-800 New Generation aircraft set to enter service for the airline on 1 October 2022.
“This is the 25th aircraft in our fleet and we’re excited to use this opportunity to add a little freshness to our look,” says Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer at FlySafair. “FlySafair has been around for eight years now and after everything we’ve overcome we decided it was time to update our image a bit.”
The airline’s refreshed logo maintains the familiar pink and blue colouring with a subtle modernisation of the lettering. A new addition is a heart-shaped icon constructed by joining the stems of two location pins.
“Our aim has always been to connect people with who and what they love through our love of flying and so when we saw this concept about bringing two places together and forming a heart it just seemed like an obvious symbol for what we aim to do every day,” says Gordon.
The airline’s paint scheme has also been refreshed with the addition of a new navy-blue stripe to the aft section and tail, which is highlighted by a crisp white fuselage. “We wanted to find something elegant and sophisticated, but simple. The more complex a paint scheme the more costly it works out to be,” Gordon adds.
Conscious of its low-cost roots, FlySafair assures customers that even the new paint scheme has cost-saving front of mind. “It seems pedantic but the pigments in darker colours of paint actually make the paint weigh more, so keeping the aircraft largely white means we save money on fuel which helps to keep ticket prices lower,” Gordon states.
Post-pandemic recovery
FlySafair points out that South African domestic aviation is on a strong path to recovery after a turbulent year. Before the pandemic, South Africans used to enjoy their pick of approximately 1.6 million seats a month on domestic routes. This number was vastly impacted by Covid-19 and the subsequent failures of several carriers who once contributed to that seat total.
Today the market has rallied to about 1.2 million seats a month, which marks a full recovery after the exit of Comair. Supply is expected to increase even further as the 2022 summer holiday season approaches.
FlySafair has managed post-pandemic recovery and growth well over the past two years. This month the airline will operate upwards of 122 flights a day, which is a 36% increase on October 2021 and 67% more than what the airline operated in October 2019, before Covid.