Here’s how to find the SAA flights that are operating right now

As the South African Airways (SAA) strike enters its sixth day, you’re probably wondering how many of the company’s planes are actually in the air.

Well, at least we were.

The quick answer? Not many.

The strike was implemented on Friday after staffers — from technicians to cabin crews — demanded a halt to possible retrenchments and higher wages.

It’s important to remember, SAA has a total of 48 active aircraft, according to AirFleets, including two new Airbus A350-900s that haven’t yet performed commercial flights.

At the moment, few of these are actually making any money at all.

So how many of these planes are currently transporting passengers?

How to find the currently operating SAA flights

There are other flight tracking services, but FlightRadar24 serves our needs here. It can be accessed via any web browser or monitored via an app, and lets users filter flights by callsign and other identifiers.

To find South African Airways flights specifically, use the filter “SAA” to see currently operating SAA flights.

Here’s also a great way to find out which planes you’re set to fly on (and no, this doesn’t just work for the Boeing 737 MAX series either).

How many SAA flights are currently operating?

As of Wednesday morning, only SA209 and SA210 — the flights between Accra and Washington-Dulles — are operating.

Both are performed using two of SAA’s Airbus A330s.

An SA Airlink flight between Johannesburg and Windhoek is also operating.

But yes. Three in total, and two if you really want to be pedantic.

According to FlightRadar24 data, more than 10 600 aircraft are in the sky at the time of writing.

It’s not clear when the SAA strike will conclude and normal operations will resume, but

Feature image: Christopher Griner via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)