I flew out of JFK at 11:15 a.m. on SAA 204 and flew 14 3/4 hours to Johannesburg, arriving at 8 a.m. local time, then caught an Airlink flight at 10 a.m. to Nelspruit Airport for 40 minutes and then drove two hours to Lion Sands Narina Lodge in Kruger National Park. That's less than 19 hours from New York to the South African bush, a dramatic transition from the most concentrated urban environment to the wilderness. And since I slept for a significant portion of the flights, it didn't even seem as long as that. Now South African Airlines is going to shave another couple of hours off of that time.
What is happening is a major shift in flight patterns in Kruger National Park, which will in turn have a profound effect on tourism traffic in South Africa's most frequented safari region.
Izak de Villiers, operations manager of Lion Sands Kruger National Park calls the village of Skukuza "the heartbeat of Kruger National Park." It is the area of greatest concentration of safari lodges in South Africa and perhaps even in all of Africa.
When the major rebuilding and enlarging of the Skukuza airport is completed in June, people traveling to Lion Sands Narina Lodge or Tinga lodge will be able to cut that final two-hour drive into practically nothing. Tinga is about a five-minute drive from Skukuza and about 10 minute's drive from Narina. And when you take that drive you are already in the African wilderness.
In de Villier's terms, when arriving at Skukuza your safari begins as soon as you get off the plane. Rather than a two-hour highway drive from Nelspruit airport to the gates of Kruger National Park, when you land at Skakusa you are already in Kruger National Park. When you travel from the airport to your lodge a few minutes away, you will be traveling in a safari vehicle in the bush and you will already be in place to see the Big Five. You may even sight some of them before you unpack.
The big change is that the airport is being expanded so that it can accommodate larger types of aircraft that South African Airways wants to fly in, such as the Avro RJ85 with a capacity of 83 passengers and the Embraer 135 with a capacity of 37. Previously the Skukuza airport could only accommodate the small turboprop airplanes with capacity of less than 20.
The new airport will be triple the size of what it was and construction is proceeding at high speed as the completion date of June 2 approaches.
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