South African Airways has continued its Africa expansion with an announcement that it will fly into Rwanda and Burundi from January, 2012. According to SAA's Head of Australasia, Thevan Krishna, the airline will commence operations to Kigali (Rwanda) and onto Bujumbura (Burundi) from OR Tambo International Airport on January 17th next year.

“We have scheduled three flights per week to these centres with the same number of return flights on alternate days. These are now in our reservations system for booking as well on our website,” Thevan said.

“This is another example of SAA’s strategy to expand our African operations into countries of increasing economic significance on the continent, particularly those that are currently hard to reach,” he said.

“We have seen more demand from both recreational and business travellers for expanded routes and travel options and this move helps meet that. Rwanda is growing as an economic and cultural as well as tourist destination while Burundi is a major exporter of tea and coffee.”

"The route between Johannesburg to Kigali and Bujumbura will be serviced our A319 aircraft which can accommodate 120 passengers in a two class (business and economy) configuration.”

“We have already seen great interest from Australia’s mining industry since we started flights to Zambia’s copper centre of Ndola on October 2. This is another example of SAA responding to customers as we continue to develop our network and meet tourism and business traffic needs," Thevan concluded.

Schedule for Johannesburg - Kigali – Bujumbura from January 17, 2012