Fluffy,
Have Mango managed to source any more aircraft yet? not so easy when you have to source and pay for those things yourself, it must be easy when they are given to you.
Actually Mango has been offered a number of 738's on lease external to SAA, as well as a few more via another option- believe me aircraft are not the problem here. In addition, negotiations are underway to move more SAA aircraft to Mango.
How would all the connecting passengers get to where they are going? on Mango? I can see the look of horror of the businessmans face as he gets out of his Business class seat and squashed into an Orange Jet with a packet of peanuts in his hand, I was under the impression that Mango was marketing to a new market, I hope thats the truth and not another lie from management
The important thing to remember here is that the market has become very segmented- the growth in the low-cost segment is spurred on by new entrants to the market as well as the lower end of the "traditional" market sliding down to the low cost segment. The growth in the “traditional’ market segment is a lot slower than that of the low cost segment. Therefore SAA will have to compete with its own airline to keep up with the other loco’s for market share. This simply does not make long term sense to offer super cheap fares with the cost base we have. Furthermore the “bucket and spade brigade” also clog up your customer service mechanism making it more difficult for the premium customer to get the type of service they are paying for. Right now, SAA is very strong in the premium segment domestically- it makes sense to go and exploit that and let the likes of Mango slug it out with the other loco’s at the budget end. Right now SAA could reduce its capacity by 30% and still not loose one premium customer (or connecting international passenger for that matter either) however the cost saving would be enormous- the additional benefit would be that Mango will be able to take advantage of both new entrant growth as well as the sliders form the traditional segment to the low cost segment.
Therefore SAA will always have a domestic operation; Mango is not in a position to be an interline carrier and quite frankly does not need to be, neither does it have aspirations to move out of its segment. The key question here is how big must SAA’s domestic operation be.
As far as this being another lie from management? Maybe you should go and have a chat with the SAAPA before making a comment like that- all this was agreed to, they were well aware that SAA aircraft were to be used.