South African Airways has reduced the frequency of its service between Heathrow and Johannesburg from twice to once a day from April 20.
The airline also announced plans to introduce the Airbus A330-300 on the route from March.
“We have decided to focus on those areas of our business that will enhance our efficiencies, bring more value to our customers and produce improved overall performance of the airline,” said chief executive Vuyani Jarana.
“Network optimisation is one such area that can contribute towards containing our costs and we introduced some initiatives that must yield dividends to return the business to commercial sustainability in the shortest time possible.”
At the end of 2017, South African Airways (SAA) started reassessing its domestic and regional markets and is now turning its attention to its international network.
“We have also decided to upgrade the service operating between Johannesburg and London Heathrow to the new Airbus A330-300 with effect from Sunday, 25 March 2018,” added Jarana. “This will afford customers a significantly improved on-board business and economy product, with state-of-the-art technology, increased comfort and capacity.
“We will continue to operate the daily non-stop SA234/SA235 service which offers customers convenient connections into and out of Johannesburg on SAA and our codeshare partners’ domestic and regional networks.”