South Africa’s state-owned airline, South African Airways (SAA), sub-leases four B737-800 aircraft to its low-cost Mango airline on commercial terms, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said in a reply to a parliamentary question on Friday.
He replied to the Democratic Alliance’s Manie van Dyk, who asked about the agreement between SAA and Mango in respect of renting aircraft to the latter, and to whom the rented aircraft belong.
The minister said the aircraft belonged to a leasing company, Gecas. Asked if Mango did not meet its rental commitments, the minister replied that SAA would have to meet its commitments to the “head lessor, Gecas” and then would have recourse to Mango to recover such costs.
Asked about a R100-million loan by SAA to Mango, Erwin said: “This information is commercially sensitive and accordingly the information can only be provided in the context of the SAA financial statement and with regard to Mango’s financial statements at the end of the financial year.”
The minister said the loan was made available to fund Mango’s start-up costs and for working capital.
In a separate reply to another question from Van Dyk, Erwin said in the period January 1 2005 to January 31 2007, 23,2% of SAA’s domestic flights were delayed and 23,6% of the international flights.
“There are various reasons … ranging from aircraft damage, industrial action and weather,” said Erwin.
Among the steps taken to resolve these matters was to hold daily meetings with internal departments and external companies — with which there were service agreements — to discuss delays.
Since early 2006 a global-operations daily reflections newsletter had been sent to 179 management and staff members in SAA to create awareness about the reasons for the delays.
SAA intranet website had been enhanced in the last year to indicate to all staff their “on-time” performance. Display boards throughout the company showed the monthly delay statistics.
From time to time SAA had asked for assistance from Star Alliance partners and other airlines to carry some of their passengers.
There had been a recent case in Washington DC during a snow storm when SAA could not land because of airport closure. Passengers were re-accommodated on United States internal flights from New York. — I-Net Bridge