That's as I understand it from a recent dinner party conversation. Fleet renewal was the main reason behind the budget request as I recall and I thought it was a ten year re-equipment plan with the fervent hope expressed that airways would go for Boeing.
SAA flight crew salaries are well up on the top end of the international pay scale for pilots. Of course they're grossly overpaid but then look at the sort of places in which they have to night stop.As if London isn't already a disgusting destination full of foreign devils, they're soon to have five days in Beijing and that means they'll have to look down at their toes and not at the sky as they walk, lest they trip on the saliva laden sidewalks of the ancient city of duck worshippers.
Meanwhile, up near Bela Bela last week, another rhinoceros was slaughtered for its horn, this time by an opportunist drive by assassin who hopped over the game fence to hack off the horn before escaping down the road in his bakkie. The apocryphal aphrodisiac is quite possibly awaiting inaugural transportation to ZBAA at this very moment.