SAA flying into major storm

MAYDAY WARNING: AIRLINE HEADING FOR CRASH UNLESS EQUITY PARTNER COMES ON BOARD

- Hein Kaiser

Taking business plan to financiers as govt will no longer bail it out.

South African Airways (SAA) might be heading for turbulence again - three years after exiting business rescue and a failed Takatso transaction.

This is according to the airline's chief commercial officer, Tebogo Tsimane, who said the airline needs an equity partner to save it. Tsimane made these remarks at an AviaDev aviation seminar recently

Earlier this year, National Treasury reported a SAA loss of R771 million in the airline business and R51 million in the red at SAA Technical.

Tsimane made it clear that SAA needed an investor quickly or it would face financial difficulty.

He said that for SAA to succeed, it needed a private owner with a controlling stake in the airline.

Tsimane said that the airline has been taking its business plan to possible financiers.

"We have just come out of business rescue. We have been told by our shareholder that we will no longer get a cent.

"So, what are we doing? We are taking the business plan to the financiers and we believe that we have a case and that the financiers, some of them, not all of them, some of them will actually come to the party and say, yes, we agree with what you are doing," he said.