Airlink will begin flying between Lanseria International Airport and Cape Town on 4 December, adding a second scheduled domestic carrier at the privately owned airport north-west of Johannesburg.
The regional airline will start with two return flights a day and expand to four daily returns from 22 March 2027. The route will use the Embraer E190. Its 98 seats are split into six business-class and 92 economy seats, with no middle seats.
This is Airlink’s first domestic scheduled service from Lanseria. It follows a three-times-weekly Lanseria–Harare route starting on 15 November, which will be Airlink’s first service from the airport and Lanseria’s first scheduled international link.
| Flight | Departs | Arrives |
|---|---|---|
| Cape Town – Lanseria (morning) | 09:20 | 11:35 |
| Lanseria – Cape Town (morning) | 09:10 | 11:35 |
| Cape Town – Lanseria (afternoon) | 13:30 | 15:45 |
| Lanseria – Cape Town (afternoon) | 13:00 | 15:25 |
Airlink is presenting Lanseria as a point-to-point option for passengers who want to avoid congestion at OR Tambo. It is aiming at people living and working in western Gauteng and the North West. Chief executive de Villiers Engelbrecht said travel choices on the route had been limited. He described the flights as an addition to Airlink’s OR Tambo services rather than a replacement.
The move puts Airlink in direct competition with FlySafair. Until now, the low-cost carrier was the only scheduled airline at Lanseria, offering 16,065 seats a week across 85 frequencies to Cape Town, Durban, George and Gqeberha. At two daily returns, Airlink will add about 2,744 seats a week across both directions on the Cape Town route. That rises to about 5,488 once four daily returns begin. Airlink is also not competing on price alone, offering a business cabin and complimentary meals and refreshments.
For Lanseria, the new carrier helps rebuild an airline base that has narrowed. In 2018, Mango, Kulula and FlySafair all flew from the airport. Comair, which ran Kulula, was liquidated in 2022 and Mango stopped flying the same year, leaving FlySafair on its own. Lanseria is South Africa’s only privately owned and operated airport. It is the country’s fourth-largest by passenger numbers, handling around 1.9 million travellers a year. In 2018 it targeted six million passengers by 2027, a goal it remains well short of.
The airport is investing to close that gap. It is planning a dedicated air cargo precinct and has about 90 hectares of land available for long-term lease. It signed its first lease with Bionic Aviation. Private aviation is also growing at the airport. Business aviation movements rose 32.8% to 1,457 in the first quarter of 2026, roughly double the growth rate at OR Tambo over the same period.
Airlink has used the same argument for its Harare service. According to Engelbrecht, the Johannesburg–Harare corridor averaged about 60,000 seats a month in 2025, with a large share of that demand coming from Lanseria’s catchment area. The Cape Town route tests the same idea on the country’s busiest domestic corridor.