Morning all,
I notice a few of you guys getting rather tetchy. Everything I have said has been argued consistently from a free market point of view. I didn't want to become embroiled in individual details.
In theory at any rate you would think that given the market dominance enjoyed by the national carrier they would have been a runaway success but they haven't.
The governent and Transnet view SAX as an essential part of SAA's route coverage, and it provides a generous amount of passengers for onward connection on SAA. As we are well aware, SAA is no position to be privatised. DTI cannot risk privatising SAX and having it fall in the hands of one of SAA's competitors. Until SAA is ready for privitisation, SAX will always have the government as mayor shareholder.
Sounds very free and fair.
There is a slight irony here because in the UK BA mainline consistently make profits but their regional ops are loss makers. In SA situation seems to be the opposite.