saa thumb medium95 76Eyewitness News and Reuters report that South African Airways (SAA) intends to reinstate six continental flights from Tuesday.  

It said customers travelling on the airline's regional network to Accra, Lagos, Lusaka, Maputo, Windhoek and Harare would be rebooked and could expect to be contacted shortly.  According to SAA, all international services were operating as normal.  Flights were cancelled over the weekend after thousands of employees went on strike over wages and the national carrier's plan to restructure.  The carrier and unions representing over half of its workforce held negotiations on Saturday that ended without an agreement.  By Sunday, both sides were trading threats.  The striking unions threatened on Sunday to shut down SA’s entire aviation industry by extending industrial action beyond state-run SAA.  The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which called the strike alongside the South African Cabin Crew Association, indicated that it was now consulting with its members at other organisations in the industry on a secondary strike.   Meantime, SAA’s acting CEO Zuks Ramasia called on the unions to retract statements made with regards to SAA’s safety, saying that otherwise, the airline would consider taking legal action.


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