Seychelles International Safari Air

Seychelles International Safari Air
IATA code :	(without)
ICAO code :	CK (SIS)
Call sign :	SISAL
Founding:	1982
Operation stopped:	1986
Seat:	Victoria , Seychelles
Home airport :	Basel-Mulhouse Airport , Switzerland
Company form:	Limited
Fleet size:	1
Aims:	Europe, Seychelles
Seychelles International Safari Air ceased operations in 1986. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

Seychelles International Safari Air (shortened to Seychelles International in the brand identity , therefore also sometimes referred to as Seychelles International Airways ) was a Seychelles charter airline with headquarters in Victoria and operational base at Basel-Mulhouse Airport in Switzerland . The subsidiary of the Swiss tour operator African Safari Club ceased its flight operations in the summer of 1986.

history

After the nationalization of most of the island nation's hotel operations and as a result of a recession in Western Europe, holiday bookings in the Seychelles fell sharply in the early 1980s. Due to the drop in passengers, Lufthansa announced the end of its scheduled flights from Frankfurt to Mahé on April 1, 1983 in autumn 1982 . At the same time, British Airways announced the suspension of its flights from London via Zurich to the Seychelles. The national tourism authority (NTA) saw the danger that the country could be cut off from long-distance travel and looked for ways to ensure the accessibility of the islands. The state-owned airline Air Seychelles could not fulfill this task because it only operated domestic flights at the time. Kenya Airways offered to set up new scheduled connections from Europe via Nairobi to Mahé, but these would not be able to compensate for the discontinuation of direct flights.

The tour operator African Safari Club was also affected by the end of the scheduled flights , which at the time wanted to expand its range and include the Seychelles in its program. The Swiss company, which also owned the Kenyan African Safari Airways (ASA), therefore, in cooperation with the Seychelles government, aimed to set up a new airline in the island state. This resulted in the Seychelles International Safari Air (SISA), which began operations on November 2, 1982 with a Douglas DC-8-53 ( registration number : S7-SIA). The aircraft had previously been used by the Kenyan ASA. Initially, the company operated two weekly charter flights from Basel and Cologne / Bonn to Mahé. In December 1983 SISA acquired a Douglas DC-8-63 (S7-SIS) from KLM , which replaced the first machine. From the beginning of 1984 she also flew to Frankfurt and Munich with this aircraft .

At the same time, the state-owned company Air Seychelles began its international flight operations on October 26, 1983 on the route from Mahé via Frankfurt to London-Gatwick in cooperation with British Caledonian Airways . The seats on these flights were initially marketed jointly by the African Safri Club and the Seychelles Tourism Authority. After Air Seychelles leased an Airbus A300 on a long-term basis in October 1985 , it increased its flight frequencies to Frankfurt and also flew to Zurich. This resulted in a competitive situation between the two Seychellois companies because the demand on the Swiss and German travel markets was too low overall to fully utilize the flights of both companies. In the spring of 1986, further tourism companies were nationalized in the Seychelles, which also affected the companies of the African Safri Club . SISA then ceased flight operations in July 1986. The DC-8-63 was subsequently used by the Kenyan sister company ASA.

fleet

• Douglas DC-8-53 (operated November 1982 to December 1983)
• Douglas DC-8-63 (operated December 1983 to July 1986)

See also

• Former Airlines List (Africa)

Web links

Commons : Seychelles International Airways  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Aerotransport Data Bank, Seychelles International Airways , accessed April 12, 2017
2. ↑ JP airline fleets international, Edition 85; Note: The company had already received a three-digit ICAO code, but it only became the official standard on November 1, 1987.
3. ^ ^{A b c} Rony Gabbay and Robin Ghosh, Tourism in the Seychelles, Center for Migration & Development Studies, The University of Western Australia (in English), accessed April 12, 2017
4. ↑ ^{a b c} U.S. Department of Commerce, Sub-Saharan Africa Report No. 2844, September 15, 1983, page 55 , accessed April 14, 2017
5. ^ Flight International, November 6, 1982 (in English), accessed April 13, 2017
6. ↑ Flight International, March 5, 1983 (in English), accessed April 13, 2017
7. ↑ ^{a b} Ben R. Guttery: Encyclopedia of African Airlines . McFarland & Company Inc., Jefferson 1998, ISBN 0-7864-0495-7 .
8. ↑ Rzjets, Douglas DC-8-53, S7-SIA , accessed April 13, 2017
9. ↑ ^{a b c} "Zebra" no longer flies, Skynews.ch, May 2008 edition, pages 41–43
10. ↑ ^{a b} Rzjets, Douglas DC-8-63, S7-SIS , accessed April 15, 2017
11. ↑ ABPic, Douglas DC-8-63 S7-SIS in Frankfurt , accessed on April 13, 2017
12. ↑ Airliners.net, Douglas DC-8-63 S7-SIS in Munich-Riem , accessed on April 13, 2017
13. ↑ Flight International, September 19, 1987 (in English), accessed April 14, 2017
14. ↑ JP airline-fleets international, born 1983 to 1987