Eurowings Discover flies to Kruger National Park in South Africa

From mid-November, Eurowings Discover will extend its African network to an exclusive destination: the world-famous Kruger National Park in South Africa will be linked to Frankfurt Airport three times weekly with Airbus A330 aircraft, with a short stop-over in Windhoek, Namibia. It will be Eurowings first destination in the Republic South Africa.

“We are very excited to be commencing scheduled flights to greater Kruger National Park region as the first intercontinental airline ever,” said Helmut Woelfel, chief commercial officer of Eurowings Discover, in a statement on Friday. “Not only is it a truly unique destination but it also marks the first South African destination in our portfolio – needless to emphasise the attractiveness and popularity of South Africa among European holidaymakers.”

Though the airport is named Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, it is not within the Kruger National Park boundaries: the airport is located 20 kilometres northeast of Mbombela, capital of the Mpumalanga Province, with asphalted road links to the Kruger National Park entrance gates. The airports’ commercial department uses KMI and KMIA as abbreviations, but the IATA/ICAO codes are MQP/FAKN.

Apart from Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, the Mpumalanga Province has two other airports. South-west of the capital Mbombela lies Nelspruit Airport, a General Aviation airport named after the previous name of Mbombela. Codes for Nelspruit Airport are NLP/FANS. A third airport in the Mpumalanga province is Skukuza Airport (SZK/FASZ). Skukuza is the only airport within the Kruger National Park. Before the opening of Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport MQP in 2001, both Nelspruit NLP and Skukuza SZK had daily connections to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Maputo (Mozambique). Nowadays, bush airport Skukuza has very limited operations (one daily Airlink flight JNB-SZK-JNB, limited slots, max. 20 movements per day, only 09h-15h, …)

On the western border of the Kruger National Park, tourists can relax in luxury private game lodges. Most known are the Sabie Sands Game Reserve, the MalaMala Game Reserve and Timbavati. These game reserves have no fence between them and Kruger, thus ensuring an optimal safari experience. These private games reserves have an airstrip too, some of them even with a regular service: example Federal Air daily links Johannesburg JNB to the MalaMala airstrip with a Beech B1900 or King Air B200. Connection by helicopter from Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport are also possible.