South African Airways has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and mismanagement scandals, with the airline having to retrench around 2,700 SA Airways employees in June 2020, according to Times Live. However, it seems the airline is expecting to start up again.
Business Tech reported that South Africa’s national airline be back in business as soon as January 2021. The government is reportedly working with private sector investors to try and resurrect SAA, and has already received upwards of 10 unsolicited offers to partner with the airline.
SAA airplane mid-flight
The potential investors have also expressed their desires to integrate SAA with its subsidiaries, which include Mango airline and SAA Technical.
On 19 August 2020, Bloomberg reported that the South African government had started talks with private entities interested in buying the national airline, which is reported to need around R10 billion to resume its operations.
According to Kgathatso Tlhakudi, the Department of Public Enterprises director general, advisors from the Rand Merchant Bank have already begun negotiations after receiving ‘as many as four promising proposals regarding South African Airways’.
In light of these negotiations, the state now wants SAA to resume its operations by the end of 2019, but that depends on successful fund raising and a pick up in demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bloomberg.
The government has previously said that approaches to buy the airline were made by potential aviation partners and private-equity firms, although Tlhakudi declined to mention who exactly the potential suitors are.
— DPE_ZA (@DPE_ZA) August 19, 2020
One potential buyer could be the Ethiopian Airlines Group, as it has previously expressed interest in purchasing the airline. The Ethiopian Airlines Group is Africa’s largest largest profitable carrier.
Image credit: Twitter/ @flysaa
