The media image of South African Airways (SAA) took an upward turn this weekend. Ironically, it was probably the extent of the downside of the airline’s reputation that provided the platform for the ascent.
I came to this conclusion from an analysis of coverage this week, which I did on the request of SAA.
No one following reportage on the airline over the past few years could have missed the slew of negative reports on the parastatal.
As a result of this coverage, no one can forget Coleman Andrews, his fallout and his pay-out.
More recently, there was the unseemly exit of Andre Viljoen. And even if we don’t recall detail about two other top SAA staffers, Mafika Mkwanazi and Richard Forson, their sagas contributed to a tarnished media image for SAA.
In recent times, SAA has taken probably its greatest damage as news leaked out about its hedging practice — the attempt to cover itself against the impact of adverse currency fluctuations on purchases of fuel and new aircraft.
This ill-fated betting exercise, based on the assumption that the rand would keep falling against other currencies, cost the company — and the country — R15 billion over two years. Go figure how many schools, houses and clinics that is.
More than R10-billion has had to be injected by parent company Transnet to keep SAA afloat — if not always aloft.
So it came to pass that the company results released last Friday showed a pre-tax loss of R8,7-billion. It is hard to soften or even massage bad news like this. And SAA took some further media hits at the weekend as well:
- The Sunday Times gave primary attention to the high-flying divorce of the incoming new CEO, Khaya Ngqula, reserving for the specialist Business Times section stories about his business abilities.
- The same paper made mincemeat of SAA by reporting that the company had twice cancelled a launch party for its new Airbus fleet, incurring cancellation costs of R11-million in the process.
- An SAA spokesperson was presented as being tight-lipped on the party issue, creating the impression that the airline not only messed up, it was also trying to cover up.
So, why, and how, could such a reportage-embattled airline come out with an overall positive image at a time like this?
The answer lies in two factors:
The general scale of the financial losses was already history — the shock impact of old news is diluted by time;
The new and bigger story in the media was the installation of a new guard, which was presented, on the whole, as offering a real hope of recovery.
In this way, the very misfortunes of the old set the stage for a dramatically contrasting reading of the new.
There is no doubt that if SAA’s results had been released alone — that is, as a single story — the airline would have been showered, once again, with negative publicity.
That the government acted to replace the board and to appoint a credible outsider as CEO was, of course, much more than a media strategy. However, the coincidence of publicising this announcement along with the results release had the effect of very successful agenda setting.
Instead of the story being the mess at SAA, it now became one of the prospects for recovery at SAA.
What alchemised SAA’s misfortunes into a golden story was largely the people focus.
Thus, City Press and Business Day pilloried the previous chairperson, Bongani Khumalo. When you’re down, don’t expect media sympathy.
However, there was no visible CEO at SAA to take the heat and the column inches — Viljoen had already stepped down some months ago. It’s hard to target a company that has no head. The absence of an immediate culprit to dwell upon meant less bad news for SAA.
On the other hand, there were certainly several other people available who easily lent themselves to praise. Villains gone, the heroes get to work. Leading the posse of gilded knights for the media was the new Transnet CEO, Maria Ramos.
She was universally reported in positive terms for her straight-talking, hard-punching style. The Sunday Times front page declared ”Ramos lays down the law”. Business Times said she ”calmly and explicitly presented shocking results”.
Ramos refused outright to be diplomatic and blame unpredictable currency movements for the SAA loss. Instead, she fingered — though without actual naming names — the previous leadership of Transnet and SAA for having made the decision to play along with hedging.
It is, it should be noted, easy in retrospect to say that the airline was wrong to take the gamble it did. And most likely, had the rand gone the other way, Viljoen would be a national hero today.
But historical interpretation is, as always, the prerogative of those on the top. And the media coverage went along with Ramos’s rendition of what had turned into a hedging bugger-up rather than a boon.
Next in line in the positive coverage was Ramos’s boss — Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin. Like her, he was also presented as decisive and clear-headed.
Then there was the hands-on Mr Fixit, new CEO Khaya Ngqula, endorsed by Ramos and Erwin. Headlined the City Press: ”Ngqula to fly SAA into better weather”.
The story describes how SAA had lost both business-class market share and flying the rugby team home. But these negatives serve as the perfect foil against which Ngqula can shine — these issues are high among the problems he plans to tackle.
Also attracting some shine in the media was the choice of Prof Jakes Gerwel as chairperson of the board, as well as other new members.
The photographs accompanying the articles showed the faces of people taking their new responsibilities extremely seriously. In short, it was a story about capable hands now on flight deck.
In all this, very little was made of the declaration by Ramos that ”SAA is not core to our long-term strategy”. This was in reference to her and Erwin’s view that the airline will remain state-owned, but outside of Transnet.
Among the quotes selected from Ramos’s remarks for coverage was her attributing the underperformance of Transnet as a whole to ”disparate business and a lack of synergies within the group”.
In some senses, this statement suggested that Transnet is simply cutting the proverbial millstone from its throat. What happens to that millstone is not investigated. What if SAA is left to fend for itself and no more bail-outs are forthcoming?
What the coverage also did not explore is whether the company will be a stand-alone state asset or be housed within a wider grouping. And, that there is no clear government strategy for the company, once out the Transnet fold, was not something that troubled the media.
As a result of the lack of such questioning in the media, warm feelings were free to waft over SAA’s prospects with nary a hint of coolness in the current. So warm, in fact, was the coverage that it is fair to say that high expectations have now been raised about the success of the airline.
This is a far better place to be in, media-speaking, than SAA used to be.
But it is also a place that generates its own challenges. At the very least, it indicates to the airline that there is going to be a longer fall if the new changes do not produce material results.
Previous media coverage took SAA to the bottom levels of public opinion. Now the reportage is framing the company as back on the rise.
If I were in the airline’s comms department, I’d keep a safety belt fastened in case. There could still be bumps ahead.