While South African Airways is struggling to be on rail despite plethora of ailments that it is upfront with, its newly appointed business rescue practitioner Les Matuson is hell bent on nursing back the beleaguered airline. He is planning to hold a meeting with the airline’s stakeholders to discuss about the ways to bring back the airline to its previous glory. In the meantime, the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party in South Africa is urging that it should have a place in the negotiations to nurse back the ailing airline company. A spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance- Alf Lees, who is also a Member of Parliament and a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts had written to the committee’s chairperson, Mkhuleko Hlengwa, to request to have Parliament be part of the business rescue practitioner’s meeting.
South Africa’s Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan recently said that the national carrier would be placed under business rescue team with immediate effect. The decision of the SAA board was supported by government. However, the minister did not say about the inclusion of the opposition parties in the negotiations. But the opposition party-Democratic Alliance- is very keen to be in the team . Recently, workers had resorted to an eight day strike, which further crippled the airline’s bottom lines.
There seems to be a consensus among various stakeholders that the airline to come back to the pink of health may require a massive restructuring. However, there are disagreements among the stakeholders how the restructuring would be done. The SAA board’s decision to retrench over 900 workers met with stiff resistance from the trade union. As a settlement of the case, the board has said that the retrenchment would be kept in abeyance for the next year. There is massive route rationalization by the airlines to cut down the cost. Also, the loss-making airline is on a life support, which according to SAA. would cost R50 million per day.
