PETER BRUCE: No way can this SAA rescue plan work
The ghost of the national carrier is being kept alive by ANC policy
It is confusing keeping up with SAA. A year ago it was a heavily-indebted failing airline crippled by corruption. In December, it went into business rescue — the better to be able to escape its financial obligations. Then travel agents stopped using it and insurers stopped insuring tickets. The airline asked for more money and got it and then the government said it couldn’t give SAA another cent; and then the coronavirus arrived and the business rescue practitioners began trying to shut it down; and then public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan got cross and demanded to know what had happened to all the money paid to SAA since December and so he hired Canadian consultants Seabury to help him start a new airline. Then on Tuesday night the business rescuers published a rescue plan that will cost about R26bn, and Gordhan has now stopped trying to start a new airline, and possibly next week SAA’s shareholder, its unions and its creditors will meet to vote on the rescue plan.
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