Embattled SAA reveals expansion plans to humble critics, buys new aircraft

The embattled national carrier, South African Airways (SAA), says its current business plan was to ramp up operations aggressively.

Despite all the documented struggles facing the airline, SAA announced it planned to implement a fleet strategy that would continue to gain momentum in growing its regional-continental services and introduce international-long haul services.

Local media reports reveal that SAA management said it was implementing the expansion of the airline to match market dynamics on both the domestic and international scene.

SAA executive chairperson John Lamola said, as the national flag carrier and an entity wholly owned by the citizens of South Africa, it had a responsibility to secure the sustainability of the airline industry in South Africa.

“The addition of extra seat capacity in the market enables the achievement of an equilibrium between supply and demand in the market that affects the pricing of air tickets,” Lamola said in a statement through IOL.

The statement comes as the International Air Services Licensing Council last month revoked 20 of the airline’s international routes out of 52 international licences and has asked difficult questions about the nature of its equity deal with Takatso Consortium.

A source told IOL’s Business Report that the airline, SAA, was stripped of licences and frequency certificates due to a lack of plans by the airline to operate the routes.

According to SAA chief commercial officer Tebogo Tsimane, he explained that the cash-strapped carrier was replacing its A340-300 with a similar capacity aircraft and would exit the A319 fleet next year.

“As we increase fleet size to match the needs of the growing network schedule, we are encouraged that our strategy to cautiously re-enter markets abandoned due to the Covid pandemic has served us very well during the past 12 months, and we will continue to follow that cautious risk-adjusted trajectory,” Tsimane said.

Meanwhile, SAA’s redistributed licences and frequencies include Cape Town and Johannesburg to Gaborone, Livingstone, Luanda, Lusaka, Maputo, and Victoria Falls.

The Air Services Licensing Council is reportedly still to consider SAA’s international licences and frequencies after dealing with the regional issues. 

As things stand, SAA operates seven Airbus aircraft but said as the peak holiday season approached it planned to bring into service an additional three A320 aircraft.

BusinessTech Africa has gathered that the first of these was delivered last month with the rest to be delivered every month from then.

In addition, SAA also said it had increased the aircraft size on two of its busiest routes, Cape Town and Harare, over the past two weeks. The Harare-Johannesburg route was now serviced by the larger A330 aircraft on three of its seven-day weekly frequencies as per the IOL report.

Main Image: SAA/Cape Business News