Review of FlySafair flight from Durban to Johannesburg in Economy

Introduction and routing

Hi, and welcome to my first English Flight-Report !

I've already written this Flight-Report in French about a year ago, so this report isn't entirely new, but just a translated version of the previous one. 

Without further wait, here is the routing for this trip :

Many options were available from Lyon to fly to South Africa, especially to Johannesburg and Cape Town. But Durban airport doesn't have many long-haul services with connexion possible onwards to Lyon. 

The only 3 long-haul airlines that desserves Durban are Turkish Airlines (with a stopover in Johannesburg), Qatar Airways (with a stopover in Maputo), and Emirates (witch is nonstop) .

When I booked this trip, Qatar Airways didn't yet flew to Lyon, so this option was immediately eliminated.

As for the other choices, Emirates was too expensive and the layovers were much too long. Turkish Airlines had shorter layover, but the price was too high. 

So, I decided that I'll simply book flights to Johannesburg and then connect onwards with a domestic flight to Durban. This option was much less expensive, and had much possible options, including :

Lufthansa, that I didn't choose, despite the fact that they're flights to Johannesburg were operated by 747s, for the simple reason that the layovers where too long. 

British Airways, witch only real advantage resided in the reasonable duration of the layovers, since excluding that, it wasn't quite worth it compared to the other option that I've decided to opt for : Emirates. Their price was about the same as BA's, but with a better product and more luggage allowance. 

P.S. : I haven't reported the long-haul legs of the journey as I didn't have enough pictures to do so. 

Durban Airport

I arrived at DUR about 2 hours before the flight by Uber, since they aren't many option out there to go to airport, if you exclude taxis and Uber. 

The check-in was quick and efficient :

As for the security, It was especially quick since they weren't very strict. 

Airside and a little bit of spotting

The airport had many available seating in it's domestic area, but only a few of theses had available power plugs. 

A big majority of the flights departing from Durban are to Johannesburg, and, to a lesser extent, Cape Town.

Having about one and a half hour before my flight, I decided to do a bit of spotting :

The tail of an Airlink E195 that's heading to Johannesburg 30 minutes before us, in a special Skybucks (Airlink's frequent flyer program) livery :

A Dash 8 Q400 of Cemair :

And the first glance at today's bird :

The flight

This flight will be operated by ZS-ZWS, a 21 years old (at the time of the flight) 737-800 that flies for Safair since 2022.

Here's another shot of it : 

Soon, boarding started. There was 2 boarding groups : the front half of the cabin boarded from the jet bridge, and the other half boarded from stairs installed at the back of the plane. 

Here is a row of seats (pictured at deboarding) :

And here is my seat, 14A. As with Ryanair, the safety card is printed at the back of the tray table. 

The PSU : 

I find the winglets on Safair planes beautiful. 

We started pushback a few minutes behind schedule. Sadly the window is scratched…

And we're off the ground…

One last view on DUR…

Here is the BoB. It wasn't particularly successful on this short flight.

The literature compartment :

Some views from the flight (that are sadly obstructed because of the scratched window) :

Landing and Johannesburg Airport

And we're already approaching Johannesburg.

We landed five minutes behind schedule 

2 FlySafair 737 in new livery :

And finally we parked at the domestic terminal of Johannesburg Airport

I'll end this report by a view of theses former SAA A340s that are parked here since years. Many A340 are parked in Johannesburg, and most of them certainly won't fly again…