Domestic Flight

www.flymango.com

Hmm... has anyone actually flown with them, and if so how are they? Bah... I should probably try searching this first ;-)

Mango is the budget flights by SAA

no difference (in terms of quality etc) between Mango and eg Kulula...

seb

To clarify. The name of the airline is Mango. "flymango" is the website address. Just as "flysaa" is the website of SAA, which as #3 says owns Mango. Well actually the S.A. taxpayer owns both SAA and Mango, but let's not go there.

The three S.A. "budget" airlines (in order of their entry into the market) are Kulula (owned by the local BA operator Comair), 1Time, and Mango. Nationwide on average probably comes next in pricing. Followed by SAA and BA/Comair. But you never know, it also depends on how far ahead you book, seat availability, and how flexible you are as to when you travel. I tried all those options when I booked my last (Jo'burg/Durban return) flight, and BA/Comair was the lowest cost taking into account my time window preferences.

For a bit of useless information, Mango got its name from the colour of the seats installed in the aircraft. As said by #3, owned by SAA and staffed mainly with retired SAA pilots and junior co-pilots. They use pretty new Boeing 737-800, leased from SAA. I prefer 1 time out of all the options, but it's worth checking prices on all 4 low cost carriers, as well as SAA itself. Often, the web price on SAA is less that the others!!!!

This afternoon I booked two seats to Cape Town and back to Johannesburg for early October. The difference between 1time and Mango was the princely sum of R2 per seat per flight. So I went for the least expensive, of course - it happened to be 1time. Then I found that I got another 10% off by paying with my credit card. Total cost to me - there and back for 2 people - is R1002.

My boyfriend flew with mango and they're pretty OK. It's budget flights, so of course planes are smaller, but I think it's pretty good.

Typically, on the same route, the planes aren't smaller. The 737 is the most common. However perhaps they squeeze in a few more seats, I don't have seat pitch figures.