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South African Airways is to restart intercontinental flights for the first time since the start of the pandemic with two routes to Brazil. The carrier will start services from Cape Town to Sao Paulo on 31 October followed by a Johannesburg-Sao Paulo route on 6 November. South African Airways (SAA) entered bankruptcy protection in December 2019 before suspending commercial operations in March 2020 for 18 months as the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The carrier eventually resumed flights within Africa in September 2021. SAA’s chief commercial officer Tebogo Tsimane said: “We have created an effective schedule which is ideal for both business and leisure travellers and our schedule is fantastic for connecting traffic.” Both routes to Sao Paulo will operate twice per week, with the Cape Town service flying on Tuesday and Saturday, and the Johannesburg route on Monday and Thursday.<br/>

Singapore Airlines will resume using the Airbus A380 to Tokyo Narita. The double-decker was first used on the 5,349 km airport pair in 2008, making it among the world's initial A380 routes. It was last deployed in early 2020, just before everything changed. The carrier has 12 A380s, of which 10 are active when writing. Singapore Airlines will return the 471-seat, four-class A380 to Japan on Sunday, October 29th. That is the day airlines in the Northern Hemisphere switch to winter schedules. The quadjet replaces the previously scheduled 787-10. The Star Alliance carrier has double daily Narita flights, the other still using the 777-300ER (SQ12/SQ11), which continues to/from Los Angeles. Singapore Airlines also has triple daily Haneda services, for five daily Tokyo flights. Examining the schedule for the first week of November shows that Tokyo is the carrier's joint third most-served city. It falls behind Kuala Lumpur (47 weekly) and Bali-Denpasar and Jakarta (each 42 weekly). The Japanese capital has as many flights as Bangkok and Penang.<br/>