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It was “pivotal” that the airline be immediately stabilised, he told reporters in Kempton Park on Monday.

The briefing followed the national airline’s annual general meeting.

The task team would include newly-appointed SAA chairman Vuyisile Kona and the CEOs of SA Express and Mango.

It would have to report back to Gigaba by December 15 on the “critical success factors” needed to turn the airline around.

SAA reported a R1.3 billion operating loss for the year ended March 31.

Gigaba said SAA had performed below expectations for the financial year and had fared more poorly than its global peers.

The airline reported R128 million in irregular expenditure — up R85 million on the previous year.

Gigaba said this was concerning as it “reflects weak internal controls”.

He was also concerned about wasteful expenditure of R4 million for the year.

SAA CEO Siza Mzimela and two other senior managers, corporate affairs general manager Theuns Potgieter and general manager for legal, risk and compliance Sandra Coetzee, resigned from the airline earlier this month.

This came barely two weeks after most of the board — including chairwoman Cheryl Carolus — also quit, saying there was a lack of support from its shareholder, the public enterprises department.

Gigaba did not consider this a problem, as the board was due to be replaced after the AGM and “a fresh perspective was required to stabilise the airline”.

“I am confident... that there is absolutely no crisis,” he said, adding that SAA had received over R10 billion in support from government in the past 10 years.

In early October, the National Treasury announced that SAA had been given a R5 billion government guarantee for a recapitalisation exercise. This would enable it to borrow from financial markets and to buy new aircraft.

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Sat May 18 23:30:09 SAST 2013 ::

Oct 15, 2012

Tikoloshe

Don't fly SAA don't fly....our company spends R600k on domestic flights per anumn and I've put out the instruction that no further flights are to be booked on SAA. Not only that but on international business class flights they are twice the price and are not even flying 777 300ER's or 380's.

The other day I drove 170km to King Shaka only to be told after waiting 2.5 hours that the flight had been delayed to the next day and that was also 2 hours late.

I fact if i was white I'd call for a boycott of SAA by white people because of their ra..ist policy of not accepting any further white pilot recruits!!!!

SAA stinks!!!
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Oct 15, 2012

Shredder

"turnaround strategy" means retrenchments to recover stolen money.
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Oct 16, 2012

midastouch

I think "turnaround strategy" means getting more clueless comrades to f**k SAA up some more!!!
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