SAA Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey goodbye.
 

https://www.tourismupdate.co.za/arti...e-novick-walks

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey goodbye.

Another, no sale.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...s-to-take-off/

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa...er-2024-03-13/

Perhaps Ethiopian can take them under their wing ?

The SA Government has said that they are no longer looking to sell a majority stake or surrender control of the airline - they now want a minority partner who will provide funding while the government retains management control. That's not something Ethiopian (or any other sane entity) will be interested in, given that Government has already had to provide ZAR27.6 billion (USD1.4 billion) in "support" to SAA management since they emerged from business rescue.

Also, this remarkable excerpt from the auditor report

"The regulator raises serious concerns regarding the SAA group's non-compliance in managing procurements, contracts, expenditure, and revenue, highlighting "material errors in the financial statements submitted for audit" and non-compliance with "governance and performance planning and monitoring prescripts". "Irregular expenditure increased from ZAR22 billion (USD1.1 billion) to ZAR44.5 billion (USD2.3 billion), whilst fruitless and wasteful expenditure increased from ZAR24.8 million (USD1.3 million) to ZAR207.3 million (USD11 million)"

More at https://www.ch-aviation.com/news/137...ale-to-takatso

It would be funny if it wasn't not funny at all.

'Presumably it won’t get any money then and [will] fold'. Except that's been said of SAA for the last decade, and yet they keep getting more money...

They will structure a pseudo-sale to another Takatso-type entity with government funding and control and pretend its private, then bailout the other entity instead to claim that SAA didn't need the money but the other guys did. Business as usual.

Last week I appeared on CGTN Africa to discuss the boondoggle at SAA.

It isn't possible to narrate the whole sordid tale in a short news clip, nor indeed in the limited characters that an internet forum permits. But here's a brief summary.

* The SA Government was supposed to sell a majority stake to a hand picked allegedly private consortium for just ZAR 51 ($3), but that broke down because they couldn't even make that sale work.

* The soon to be former Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan seemed entirely unwilling to share the details of this transaction even with parliament, because well, transparency isn't quite a feature of Government in South Africa. There's a soap opera's worth of corruption allegations and whistleblowers and misconduct over this.

* The Auditor General recently released the most damning audit report I've ever seen about any company. Among other gems, it states that SAA had "inadequate record-keeping, misstatements, and a lack of critical skills and capacity to prepare credible financial statements". Ouch.

* Despite SAA being nominally independent of state subsidy now, the Government has spent ZAR 27.6 billion ($1.4 billion) in "support" since it exited business rescue in 2021. A billion here, a billion there, and soon we're talking real money!

This is a poster child for why governments should never get involved in the airline business. And why I do not envy John Lamola and team their job of crewing the Titanic as the iceberg approaches.