By Mumammad Omar
It amazes me to think the ruling party wants to create a new airline when the previous airline swallowed billions of rand, created huge debts and ran out of cash.
Even South African Airways’ favourite low-cost airline that, after competing with massively subsidised Mango and made a profit, went out of business.
Globally, demand for passenger air travel has dropped considerably, especially on the international routes. Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines have announced cutbacks and the desert airlines have had to scale down the number of passenger routes.
International airlines are profitable on cargo and premium clients. The other aircrafts have to be in the air with a “full load” in order to be profitable.
One just has to think how all the fancy airports are managing with a drop in the aeronautical and the famous non-aeronautical revenues – parking, rentals and concessions.
This is like the unravelling of the corruption by politicians, corruption that was exacerbated after the Scorpions were scrapped. It’s fascinating to see some politicians are anti-corruption yet they were the one who voted for the Scorpions to be scrapped.
With the bailout of SAA, it seems the politicians are voting in favour of the new SAA investing all pension and retirement funds in the new airline. We will see how quickly this idea will evaporate.
When it comes to squandering taxpayers’ moneys, there is no accountability or responsibility for the consequences of bad decisions by any of the officials or politicians.
The Star