SAA seeks govt bail-out

[Sneeky]

SAA did basically the same trick as Telkom, they had the monopoly on domestic flights and they screwed the public for all they could - As soon as the market opened up, the writing was on the wall, they were too soft, fat and lazy, lost money and are dogged by legal woes from all sides

You might be wondering, so why Mango... a cheap airline is not going to turn them around.... And you would be right, the idea was to put the other two Airlines, or maybe one of them out of business, so we could return back to the way things were, and then tell the people, see... we told you... you cannot trust these cheap airlines

Spot on as always.
Top heavy, poorly run and managed. The only difference between SAA and Telkom is that Telkom tend to win or drag out their legal battles indefinitely.
Standard Bank also ditched them and their voyager program late last year.

What really got my the blood boiling was watching this story on the news last night. SAA refused to comment on camera. The audacity of the swine.

To put this in perspective, SAA received a government bailout through Transnet to the tune of 6 BILLION rand in 2004. Now speculation (based on comments from their CEO last year) has it that the figure required is 4 BILLION rand.
10 Billion rand in 3 years from tax payers if this goes through. I wonder what kind of service the other airlines would be able to provide with this type of cash injection.

Alec Erwin

He said it was important for the state to maintaining strategic control over the airline, but this did not rule out the possibility of disposing of a minority stake in future.

Prepare for another TELKOM.