Qatar Airways’ ban on all travelers from South Africa is set to change. Since the rise of the Omicron variant, over the past two weeks, the airline had previously banned all travelers from South Africa on its flights out of the country.
In two days’ time, the airline will be reinstating its twice-daily flights out of Johannesburg and a daily service from Cape Town. Both of these routes will be one of its Boeing 777 aircrafts.
Qatar Airways has also announced that all travelers who had previous bookings but were impacted by the ban can now rebook their tickets on these flights.
While the airline continued to fly to South Africa since the discovery of the variant, they banned all flights departing South Africa. Qatar Airways is one of the first of the either immigration offices, airlines or others who initially put bans on travelers due to the Omicron variant, to lift said ban and resume business as usual.
The airline has been diligently keeping track of the ever-changing national and international regulations imposed since COVID and its subsequent variants have been found. The airline will lift the restrictions on December 12th allowing those to travel and return to some sense of normalcy before the holiday period.
Qatar Airways vice-president Africa Hendrik du Preez told TravelNews, “We also know how important tourism is to South Africa and hope this will encourage more people to visit South Africa over the summer season.”