Forget Mango or Kulula, a year of data shows British Airways are cheapest

When not throwing barbs at each other, a favourite pastime of 1time and Comair is to complain in their financial statements about Mango and SAA:

"Continued pricing of tickets at below cost by the state owned competitor" (Comair)

"State subsidised Mango and SAA continue to distort the market by selling below cost in an attempt to retain market share" (1time)

Given these comments, one would expect Mango and SAA to be rolling out ultra cheap flights, with 1time and Comair (Kulula and British Airways) never featuring. But, extraordinarily, out of the 9 times we've surveyed flights from Cape Town to Johannesburg over the last year Mango has been cheapest only once and SAA have never been cheapest.

Incredibly, British Airways are most often cheapest

Incredibly, British Airways are most often the cheapest on the Cape Town to Johannesburg flight route. We've carried out 9 price comparisons of this route over the last year and British Airways have been cheapest 3 times, 1time airline twice, Nationwide Airline twice (although that was a long time ago), Kulula once and Mango once. So much for 1time and Comair's groans about Mango undercutting the market, British Airways is the real king of cheap!

Survey date	1time	BA	Kulula	Mango	Nationwide	South African Airways
11 Apr 2008	719	550	652	741	661	743
1 Mar 2008	679	550	868	696	586	747
19 Jan 2008	589	550	426	633	481	706
8 Dec 2007	1569	1200	1556	1332	1402	2073
27 Oct 2007	639	730	656	746	695	657
15 Sep 2007	499	720	589	599	671	1010
4 Aug 2007	549	719	539	sold out	511	644
23 Jun 2007	449	718	499	301	483	643
12 May 2007	549	713	499	548	481	993

Survey dates are approximately 4 weeks before flight dates tested, prices were checked for flights between 1729 and 2031.