The OnBoard Courier for South Africa

After it come Cape Town (CPT) with 34 destinations and about 115.3 departures a day, Durban (DUR) with 11 destinations and about 59 departures a day, Port Elizabeth (PLZ) with 3 destinations and about 20 departures a day and Bloemfontein (BFN) with 4 destinations and about 12.3 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 5 airports in South Africa that publish departures schedule about 495.3 movements a day and reach 129 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From JNB alone, 1,196 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 77 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

67 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 19 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to Zimbabwe, about 29 flights a day, Botswana, about 17.7 flights a day, Namibia, about 13.3 flights a day, Mozambique, about 12.9 flights a day and Zambia, about 11.9 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from South Africa without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from South Africa to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

47 airlines fly out of South Africa in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to South African Airlink on 69 routes, Safair on 29 routes, CemAir on 24 routes, South African Airways on 21 routes and Global Aviation on 6 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of JNB in this data runs to Atlanta, United States (ATL), 13,583 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, South Africa is reached nonstop. The network file records 3 such pairs: Dubai to Jo'anna (JNB), about 4.6 a day on Emirates, Dubai to Cape Town (CPT), about 3.4 a day on Emirates and Dubai to Durban (DUR), about 1.1 a day on Emirates. More than one nonstop pair means more than one chance to travel on the day the consignment is ready, which is worth more on this kind of work than any single fast flight.

The only carrier on that sector is Emirates. With one carrier there is no choice to make and no fallback to fall back on, so the booking is made early and the alternative is a connection rather than a different airline.

This site publishes 9 lane pages that cross the border of South Africa. Leaving South Africa: Cape Town to London, Johannesburg to Doha, Johannesburg to London and Johannesburg to Perth. Arriving: Abu Dhabi to Johannesburg, Doha to Johannesburg, Dubai to Cape Town, Dubai to Johannesburg and Frankfurt to Johannesburg.

Each of those has its own page with the flying time, the gateway pair and what actually moves on it. Read together they say something the individual pages do not: the places South Africa is connected to on this desk are Abu Dhabi, London, Doha, Dubai, Frankfurt and Perth. A lane page exists because the traffic on it is real, not because the pair looked plausible on a map.

South Africa has three Emirates gateways with high frequency, a deep industrial base and a mining sector with an extreme cost of downtime. It is the most operationally straightforward major market on the continent and often the first place a client tries hand-carry.

The entry and formalities guide for South Africa on this site goes through it properly: what the declaration has to say, which documents travel with the courier rather than behind them, and where a temporary import is the right instrument instead of a permanent one. A hand carry is not exempt from any of that. It only removes the queue, the depot and the handover to a stranger.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 3 city pages, 6 standalone city pages, 5 Atlas entries and 9 lane pages for South Africa, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page, the entry and formalities guide, the travel and connections page and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. The country page sells, the city pages answer, and the lane pages price. They are kept apart because a reader arrives at exactly one of those three questions and merging them would bury the other two.