New Routes Boost Southern Africa Safari Flight Links

Travellers stitching together multi country safaris across Southern Africa now have two concrete new tools to work with, a triangular Air Tanzania route that links Dar es Salaam, Victoria Falls, and Cape Town, and a live codeshare between South African Airways and TAAG Angola Airlines that ties Luanda into South Africa and key regional gateways on one ticket. The new Air Tanzania flights started on 11 December 2025, while the SAA and TAAG codeshare went live on 1 December 2025, so both changes are already bookable for 2025 and 2026 trips. For safari goers and business travellers alike, the practical question is how these Southern Africa safari flight links can cut backtracking, reduce misconnect risk, and open up fresh combinations that once required awkward overnight stops.

The change is that Air Tanzania has entered the Cape Town market with a twice weekly Dar es Salaam, Victoria Falls, Cape Town rotation, while SAA and TAAG now sell each other's services through Luanda, Johannesburg, and Cape Town so that Luanda to Durban, Gqeberha, Harare, Lusaka, and other city pairs can be ticketed as one journey.

How The Air Tanzania Triangle Works

Air Tanzania's new service uses Julius Nyerere International Airport (DAR) in Dar es Salaam as the northern anchor, Victoria Falls Airport (VFA) on the Zimbabwe side of the Zambezi as the central stop, and Cape Town International Airport (CPT) as the Southern Hemisphere city break finale. The airline is operating the route twice a week on an Airbus A220 300, a narrowbody that gives enough range for the Cape Town leg and enough seats to make the triangle viable for both tourists and business travellers.

Schedules published around launch show flights running on two set weekdays, widely reported as Thursday and Friday or Thursday and Sunday depending on local announcements, so the pattern is best treated as a fixed late week operation that could still be tweaked in future seasons. The southbound leg runs Dar es Salaam to Victoria Falls to Cape Town in one continuous routing, while the northbound direction is structured so that passengers return nonstop from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam, avoiding an extra stop at Victoria Falls on the way home.

For safari planners, this matters because it effectively turns Victoria Falls into a mid point between East Africa and the Cape. From Dar es Salaam, travellers can already reach Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, and key national park gateways with Air Tanzania, so the triangle allows a visitor to spend a week on the Serengeti or Nyerere, then fly via DAR into Victoria Falls for Zambezi and Hwange time, then continue to Cape Town for wine country and Table Mountain before flying home.

What The SAA TAAG Codeshare Adds

The SAA and TAAG codeshare is a separate development, but it slots cleanly into the same safari and business travel map. Under the agreement, South African Airways places its SA code on TAAG flights from Johannesburg O R Tambo International Airport (JNB) and Cape Town International Airport to Luanda's Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport (LAD), and beyond Luanda to Lisbon and Sao Paulo. TAAG, in turn, gains access to destinations in SAA's domestic and regional network, including Durban's King Shaka International Airport (DUR), Gqeberha, Cape Town, Harare's Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport (HRE), and Lusaka, all sold under TAAG's DT code.

Crucially for travellers, the codeshare has moved from signing ceremony to activation. SAA's own releases and trade coverage confirm that ticket sales opened with travel from 1 December 2025, so itineraries that previously required separate tickets, manual baggage re check, and self funded misconnects can now be booked with through checked bags and alliance level schedule protection.

Old Versus New Routings

Before these changes, many travellers trying to combine Tanzania with Victoria Falls and Cape Town, or Angola with a safari circuit through Botswana, Zambia, or Zimbabwe, had little choice but to backtrack through Johannesburg and sometimes even connect via a Gulf or European hub. A typical East Africa to Victoria Falls trip might have meant Kilimanjaro to Nairobi, Nairobi to Johannesburg, then Johannesburg to Victoria Falls, with three separate sectors, two hub banks, and at least one long overnight.

With the Air Tanzania triangle, that same traveller can now route Kilimanjaro to Dar es Salaam, then DAR to Victoria Falls, cutting out one hub entirely and staying on a single carrier for the African legs. For those who want to finish in Cape Town, the extra DAR to VFA to CPT segment simply extends the arc south, instead of forcing a zigzag pattern through multiple hubs.

On the Angola side, Luanda based travellers or visitors coming in for offshore work who previously had to fly Luanda to Johannesburg, then pick up separate tickets to Durban or Port Elizabeth, can now buy one LUANDA to Durban or Luanda to Gqeberha ticket via SAA, with TAAG and SAA treating Johannesburg or Cape Town as a shared hub. That does not remove all complexity, but it reduces the incentive to build risky do it yourself connections across carriers that have no interline agreement.

Sample Safari Use Cases

One obvious winner is the classic Serengeti plus Victoria Falls plus Cape Town itinerary. A traveller could fly into Dar es Salaam for a coastal night, continue to a northern Tanzania safari circuit, then route back to DAR and take the Air Tanzania triangle through Victoria Falls to Cape Town. From Cape Town, they can pick up nonstops or one stop flights back to Europe or North America, or stay on in the Western Cape for wine tourism and coastal drives.

Another use case links Angola, Namibia, and Botswana. TAAG already serves Windhoek and other Southern African points, and the SAA codeshare makes it easier to connect from Luanda into South African Airways flights that reach Namibia and on into South Africa. From there, overland or regional flights can reach Etosha, the Okavango, or Chobe, with Victoria Falls as a logical entry or exit point thanks to the Air Tanzania link and existing regional services.

A third pattern is for Southern African travellers heading north. Cape Town or Johannesburg based safari fans can now fly on Air Tanzania through Victoria Falls to Dar es Salaam, then connect into Zanzibar or Kilimanjaro without changing airlines, opening combinations like Cape Town plus Zambezi plus Zanzibar that once required a patchwork of carriers.

How This Fits Into The Wider Network

These moves sit inside a broader trend of African carriers using targeted new routes and codeshares to stitch together regional networks without waiting for a single pan continental solution. South African Airways has already signalled that it is leaning hard into partnerships, for example with Turkish Airlines on routes between Türkiye and Southern Africa, and is rebuilding its own fleet more slowly than originally planned. Air Tanzania, for its part, has been adding regional points and positioning Dar es Salaam as a mid sized hub linking East, Central, and Southern Africa.

For Adept's readers, that means this is not an isolated triangle and one codeshare, it is part of a growing mesh of inter African options. Our earlier piece on Türkiye South Africa Codeshare Flights From March 2026 looked at how Istanbul, Johannesburg, and Cape Town are being tied together. Destination coverage such as the Southern Africa regional guide and our report on Waterfalls Lodge Debuts Steps from Victoria Falls shows how those air links feed straight into on the ground safari choices.

Practical Booking Advice

In practice, travellers should still do some homework before assuming every possible combination will appear in an online search engine. Early in a route's life, airlines sometimes load inventory cautiously, hold back certain fare buckets, or tweak timings once they see real world demand, so working with a human advisor or checking multiple search tools remains sensible.

Where possible, aim to keep the Air Tanzania triangle and the SAA TAAG links on one ticket, even if that means paying slightly more than two separate point to point fares. Through tickets greatly improve your position if weather, congestion, or technical issues delay a flight at Luanda, Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, or Cape Town, because the operating carriers then share responsibility for reaccommodation.

Travellers with fixed lodge or cruise start dates should also consider building at least one buffer night between a long haul arrival and their first safari connection, especially in the African summer thunderstorm season. A missed connection into Victoria Falls can be far more disruptive than a late arrival into a city where there are hourly shuttles and multiple hotel options.

Sources

• Air Tanzania adds CPT via Vic Falls
• Air Tanzania to Launch Dar es Salaam Cape Town Service
• Air Tanzania Launches New Dar es Salaam, Cape Town Route
• TAAG Angola Airlines and South African Airways expand connectivity with new codeshare agreement
• TAAG and SAA launch codeshare
• Türkiye South Africa Codeshare Flights From March 2026
• Southern Africa destination guide
• Waterfalls Lodge Debuts Steps from Victoria Falls
• Julius Nyerere International Airport
• Victoria Falls Airport
• Cape Town International Airport
• Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport