4Z321

Departure: 09:25 Windhoek Airport (WDH)
Arrival: 11:35 Cape Town Airport (CPT)

Airlink is an airline based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Its main business is to provide services between smaller, under-served towns and larger hub airports. It has since expanded to offer flights on larger, mainline routes. Some of its more interesting destinations include St Helena Island. They are not part of the 3 big alliances, instead their rewards program is known as Skybucks (not to be confused with Starbucks).

New routes: Airlink will start operating flights from Johannesburg to Lilongwe on 4 September and to Blantyre on 5 September 2023.

Check-in was simple. There was not much of a queue and within 10 minutes, we got our boarding passes. No questions asked about visas or anything. I remember previously when flying from Antananarivo to Johannesburg, the staff could not issue our onward boarding pass to South Africa due to some technical glitch. This time round it was fine.

Windhoek hosea kutako airport is a small airport, so there is nothing much to do. You don’t have to arrive too early for your flight, maybe 90 minutes before is fine. There are 6 boarding gates at the airport and our flight to Cape Town is allocated to Gate 5. There are no aerobridges.

Once the airport staff have verified your boarding pass, you just walk across the tarmac to your plane. It is a short walk. Follow instructions given by the ground staff.

Our Airlink plane. The aircraft is a Embraer RJ135. There is not a lot of space in the overhead compartments, so passengers are advised not to bring their big bags on board. It is better to check the luggage in, anyway the airline offers free allowance of 20kg per passenger which is included in the fare.

The plane is small and only has a single aisle. Seats are in a 1-2 arrangement.

Surprisingly, for the short 2 hour flight, there was a snack box served. Even for Singapore Airlines, they do not serve much, maybe just a pretzel packet and a drink. Here, we had a choice of hot beverage, a bottle of mineral water and a snack box which contains a sandwich and a sweet snack.

Time went by so quickly. I had a quick snooze after consuming the snack box. As we were landing into Cape Town, I saw that the landscape had changed. Here, the landscape is more green with more vegetation, unlike in Namibia. It was a comfortable flight with Airlink. The stewardesses are not the most friendly, but they got the job done. They collected the trash efficiently and prepared the cabin for landing.

We disembarked at the remote terminal, so we had to take a shuttle bus to the terminal. Clearing immigration was fast too, as there was only one flight before us. No questions asked by the South African authorities, they just scanned and stamped our passport. This is my fourth time visiting South Africa, and the second time in Cape Town. I hope to go back to some familiar places, as well as check out the vineyard areas in Franschhoek.

Cape Town is also known as the Mother City.