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BL Premium reports that the largest union at Comair, which has been scrambling for cash since at least January to make up for losses caused by the Omicron-induced travel bans, says it will meet the airline’s management team on Thursday amid fears of job losses after the company indefinitely grounded all flights.
Comair, which operates British Airways and Kulula flights in SA, announced on Tuesday that it had been forced to suspend all its flights with immediate effect due to a lack of funding. Comair employs 2,000 workers. National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola indicated on Wednesday: “Numsa is very concerned about what is happening at Comair and job security. We are meeting management tomorrow in order to get more information.” The indefinite suspension of operations — coming some two months after Comair’s fleet was grounded for almost a week by SA’s aviation regulator due to safety concerns — risks causing enormous reputational damage. It has struggled to completely emerge from business rescue and its new owners have been on the hunt for funding since January to make up for about a R100m loss in revenue arising from travel bans in the wake of the discovery of the Omicron variant. But so far the company has been unable to secure all the required funding. This week, the company’s business rescue practitioners said that the process to raise the necessary capital was under way and they were confident the funding would be secured. On Wednesday when asked how employees would be affected, a Comair spokesperson said employees had been paid until the end of May.
Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bekezela Phakathi at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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