High-flyers sought to lift SA Express
Regional carrier's new CEO struggles to attract top executives
Siza Mzimela, who was recently appointed interim CEO of SA Express to turn the bankrupt regional airline around, says she is "very disappointed" by the scale of corruption and mismanagement there. SA Express was grounded by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in May, and, two weeks later, Mzimela was part of a ministerial intervention team brought in to fix it. "We were quite disturbed by some of the things we came across," she says. "We found ourselves with contracts that were not commercially viable, and that we should never have entered into." Including with SAA. She blames the airline's grounding on a complete lack of management accountability. "Everyone was running around trying to do the right thing. Not that it didn't know what needed to be done, but no-one was taking accountability. Junior staff would 'escalate' and that's where it would end." The CAA was criticised by the government for grounding the airline's planes, but it had "no choice", she says. "It had r...
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