BL Premium reports that SA Airways (SAA) does not have plans to get into the air any time soon, saying in an update on its website on Friday that domestic and regional flights were suspended until 30 April and international flights until 31 October.
The state-owned airline had hoped to resume flights by now but international travel remains conditional due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the demand for domestic travel has dropped significantly and has not recovered. In addition, the company was not allocated any additional money in last week’s budget, after a plea for another R3.5bn to fund the business rescue plan. The failure to secure additional funding in the budget and the prolonged mothballing of operations will make it difficult for SAA to recover its market share, which has been taken over by other operators. The SAA business rescue plan is predicated on a far healthier and bigger market than appears likely now. On Wednesday, finance minister Tito Mboweni said that he had received a request from SAA for additional funding, but still had to examine whether it was worth supporting. Last week, the government chartered an SAA flight to Brussels to fetch a batch of 80,000 vaccines amid criticism that this was an enormously expensive exercise when normal freight could have been used. The SAA Pilots Association, which is in a labour dispute with SAA and has been locked out of the workplace since December, said in several interviews that far cheaper options existed.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carol Paton at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
- Read too, Creditors ‘blindsided’ by SAA’s request for R3.5bn in additional funding, at Daily Maverick
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