Alternative airlines, Presidental Air and 1Time, are upbeat about their services to the area.

Presidential Air has been operating flights to Umtata from Durban for the past month and the response has been very good, managing director Charles Naismith said.

"We believe within the next month or two we will be running our aircraft full on the Umtata route and we hope to be able to base a new aircraft in East London also to service the Wild Coast," he added.

Presidential Air is using a 9-seater Islander aircraft on the Umtata-Durban route and is set to take delivery of another which will be based in East London within the next few weeks.

The twice-weekly flights to Umtata run on Fridays and Mondays.

Cut-price airline 1Time is getting ready for its launch on 28 July with more than 700 bookings for flights on the Johannesburg-East London route.

"The response to the East London flights has been very, very good. Advance bookings are much better than at the launch of our Johannesburg-Durban flights," the airline's commercial manager Des O'Connor said.

The company embarked on an advertising campaign this week and the response to radio advertisements has been better than anticipated.

The airline's first flight will arrive here at 11:30 next Wednesday.

O'Connor said that 1Time business had picked up by between 10 and 15 percent within the first few months of the airline introducing a service. He attributed this increase to the fact that flying has become more affordable and therefore more people are looking at flying as a travel option.

Initially 1Time will have a 119-seater Douglas DC 9 leaving Johannesburg at 10:00 daily to arrive in East London at 11.30am and then leaving again at noon, arriving to Johannesburg at 13:30.