That's interesting evan, because the financials that we get to see at briefings contain significant costs to SAA for revenue management, passenger handling and millions to SAA for advertising.
I actually think that without SAX's contributions, SAA's picture would look even bleaker. It is not as if SAA's costs will decrease if SAX went their own way and the SAX route structure is planned around SAA's main routes and international connections. A recent change to SAX's GBE frequencies had the SAA knickers in a knot, because we then connected seamlessly with BA's international flight times and not to SAA's.