South African Airways (SAA) needs at least 20 aircraft, 10 wide-bodied Airbus 330s and 10 Airbus 320s, to satisfy the International Air Services Council (Iasc) that it has the capacity to service its routes and frequencies, experts said yesterday as the airline announced leasing only one plane to make its case.
The council revoked 111 of SAA’s frequencies and 14 routes this week for failure to service Harare in Zimbabwe, Kinshasha in the DRC, Mauritius, Lagos in Nigeria, Accra in Ghana, Lusaka in Zambia, and Luanda in Angola.This is in addition to 20 slots revoked last week after deliberations with the airline's executives and the air services council ended in a stalemate on its capacity as well as the regulatory issues around its potential new partner, the Takatso Consortium.
Up for reckoning are the unserviced routes and frequencies to Washington, DC and New York in the US, Frankfurt in Germany, Perth in Australia, London in the UK, and Sao Paulo in Brazil, which have thus far been spared at SAA’s request.
“SAA continues to ramp up its operations by bringing in additional equipment into the fleet. The first addition arrived on September 27. SAA has taken delivery of an Airbus 320 which allows the airline to continue to gain momentum with the intention to resume full regional and international services. There is no doubt that SAA still retains a high brand equity and customer loyalty, demonstrated by successfully operating six in-demand routes on our continent, high occupancy rates on domestic routes, and robust increase of Voyager members,” SAA spokesperson Vimla Maistry said on Thursday night.
What is concerning to potential investors about SAA losing some of its routes and frequencies is that part of the business rescue process which ended in April last year was that the portion of skyways it had was intrinsic to its value and if it lost those, it had little to show as a viable opportunity.
Insiders said the council had the impression that SAA was not sufficiently capable at present to utilise the opportunities it had and the council was concerned that it could not be soft on SAA when other airlines were fully compliant with the aviation rules while the national carrier was trying to hold on by the skin of its teeth.
“SAA do not know how to spin, their response falls far short of where they should be. The airline needs at least 10 widebody A330s to service its long distances like your Accra and Lagos. They are presently using one plane for that and it’s not sufficient. They also need 10 narrow-bodied A320s to service the regional and domestic routes. They are running a shoddy operation between Cape Town and Johannesburg, and then there is still Durban,” an insider said.
Last month, the Air Services Licensing Council (ASLC) gave SAA 90 days to address what it regarded as breaches of aviation law.
This includes providing more information about the Takatso deal and management changes – or risk losing its air service licences. SAA does not currently operate flights on routes to Nairobi in Kenya, Lilongwe and Blantyre in Malawi, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Windhoek in Namibia, Entebbe in Uganda, Livingstone in Zambia, Abidjan in Ivory Coast, Maputo in Mozambique, Abuja in Nigeria, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. SAA has indicated in the past that it intends to once again fly these routes in the future.
The council has cancelled frequencies on all these routes except to Dar es Salaam, Abuja, Maputo and Abidjan.
Maistry said: “South African Airways assures its customers that the airline is not losing its route rights. SAA continues to operate its current network and schedule with 6 regional and 3 domestic destinations. Currently, the airline has deployed additional capacity on the Cape Town route to meet demand and we have increased the aircraft size on the Harare route."
She said SAA made representation to the council on its current route allocation and the decision by the council to review some of the frequencies on the routes that the airline was not serving.
Maistry said in addition to SAA’s own operations, customers can choose to fly with SAA’s codeshare partners on Emirates, Air Mauritius, LAM Mozambique, Egyptair, Ethiopian Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Kenya Airways at competitive rates.
“Customers and Voyager members can be assured that SAA will be adding more codeshare partners in the coming months,” Maistry said.
Members of Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises expressed concerns, quickly dispelled by SAA, that the airline was in danger of liquidation or expropriation.
The airline has slid down the Skytrax World's Top 100 Airlines chart after the 2022 World Airline Awards, held in London last month. The latest survey results show SAA sliding to 79 on the list of top 100 airlines, dropping 12 places for the year.
Maistry said SAA was a proud member of the 24 member airlines network, Star Alliance, which prided itself on being the world’s largest global airline alliance.
Star Alliance claimed World’s Best Airline Alliance title at the Skytrax 2022 World Airline Awards. The Star Alliance network currently offers more than 10 000 daily flights to almost 1 200 airports in 184 countries. Further connecting flights are offered by Star Alliance Connecting Partners Juneyao Airlines and THAI Smile Airways.
SAA’s decline in the global standings predates the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, SAA ranked 46, and in 2018, 45, maintaining its position at roughly the half-way mark for consecutive years. Over the past decade of Skytrax awards, SAA's position peaked at 21 in 2013.
At the time, South Africa's national carrier was rated better than British Airways, KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Air France. SAA's drop to 79 on the international rankings puts it at its worst spot since Skytrax started measuring airlines two decades ago.
BUSINESS REPORT