Time indeed to fly away on a higher quality lower cost carrier.

There are some fundamental problems with some people's thinking here.

To quote from earlier:

"Who will pay for Air France's massive loss this year?

Who will pay for KLM's massive loss this year?

Who will pay for Luftansa's massive loss this year?

The closure of SpanAir? Malev Airlines? Who do you think will pay for that?"

Air France, KLM and Lufthansa pay for those losses out of their bank balances. If they can't cough up the cash and can't get any more from any banks they go bust. When they go bust no-one 'pays for' it, all their assests get sold off to pay as much of the debt as possible and then they just don't exist any more!! Nobody 'paid' for the closure of SpanAir and Malev, they just ceased to exist.

An airline is a business. It sells travel seats to passengers and cargo space to freight operators. It then has to balance the money that it costs to run that business (i.e. fly the aeroplanes, pay for the business infrastructure, etc.) with the money that it brings in from sales. There may be some years where there are losses (money 'in' is less than money 'out') but the cash available and the willingness of banks to lend to a sensible business plan should cover that. The good years of profit (ooh, that term that the lefties hate!!) must be there to cover any years of loss and keep the business afloat. Money is like fuel to a business. Keep it topped up and it doesn't crash! Run out and it crashes!

But then there are some places where airlines are considered to be 'government departments' rather than businesses. The Soviet Union was a good example of that. But then the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, does it?

If SAA cannot make a profit without being propped up by that over-strained taxpayer, then it should no longer exist... just like SpanAir and Malev and countless others, no matter how 'good' anyone might think it is.

Apologies for stating the 'bleeding obvious' here, but it is quite apparent from some of the posts on this that there are several who just can't (or won't?) see that which is 'bleeding obvious'!

SAA needs to be privatised and all the FAT leaned off. Planes, in order to make money, need to fly, not spend hours and hours parked on the ground in LHR etc, etc.

At the moment SAA is nothing more than a state "gas guzzler" stuck with a 1970's "flying club" mentality and run by a bunch of morons who couldn't get p!ssed in a brewery, let alone turn over a profit.

MB, I used to feel like you, but then after a while soon realised that it was useless trying to defend the issue. BTW, Skyvan might have flown Skyvans 20yrs ago, but was a well respected training captain at SAA and has moved onto other greener pastures so he knows what he's talking about.

What I'd like to ask the taxpaying Ppruners out there is if SAA cannot compete with A380's of EK, Singapore and AF, and is shut down, would it be in SA's interests to allow airlines like EK to completely take over? At the rate of expansion of EK, maybe they are going to be the dominant world airline one day.

Truth (True's... ek se maar net)
 

Eks'kuse my behd englisch, but...

what you all say, (and I mean those for SAA and those against SAA), is true, but it's not the entire truth...

Now... to a true story which is the entire truth... EK will become the dominant airline of the world. That's a fact which is not based on emotion. Why? Simply because that is their goal. They are slowly but surely working towards that goal. Is it achievable? Yes! Is it measurable? Of course it is. Will they achieve it? Absolutely, they say they will and everybody employed by EK is willingly or unwillingly working towards that goal.

Do you want to work for such a company?

Why not work for LH(group) or BA or any other company that has other goals apart from being the biggest?

Is being the biggest the best?

Why not work for an airline that offers top notch training and pride to its pilots and cabin crew?

There are many airlines to choose from. Some offer all of the above, some offer great salaries, but mediocre training, or vice versa. Some are based in beautiful countries with sound politics, some in less favourable and less stable countries.

The choices are many. What do you identify with?

And finally, apart from feeling strongly (passionate) for an airline, at the end of the day one has to jump through the hoops (selection) and then only will one know if it was worth it or not.

Truth be told, no place is perfect, but some places come close. (I am not thinking of any airline in specific as it's relative to you individually).

But EK will dominate, be that a good thing or not. It's a fact. The domination will be in the numbers of routes, aircraft etc. ... But take LH, BA for example, they dominate in their training...

Edit: spelling/grammar

Just heard that SAA are pulling out of the CPT LON route from mid August. Bizarre decision. But loads have been poor compared to BA's on the same route so they've done something wrong.

SAA
 

Slight drift of thread here but I see in the online edition of the JNB Guardian today that the Gautrain appears to be embroiled in a number of scams and sideways payments totalling over ZAR 25 Billion......six to SAA is chump-change.Privatize SAA and give the SA taxpayer a break...fortunate that the SA economy is relatively strong and can absorb such punishment.Imagine how well it would do without all the baggage its carrying now.

It's carrying baggage both on the ground, political appointees (prev-i-usly dis-udvantaged) and in the air (friends and family of the former on freebies and rebate tickets filling seats in the front end. That's why BA can make a profit on the route and SAA can't. SAA's aircraft are less economical but not to such an extent.

http://www.frogforum.net/attachments...bie_thread.jpg

:E :E

Tableview: I've heard that SAA are blaming it on poor star alliance connectivity in London reducing loads, I read that the only way they can get traffic is by consistently undercutting BA on price making their profit margin low.

I don't know about BA/SAA but the other day it was cheaper to route JNB/AMS/SYD on KLM than it was to go direct JNB/SYD on SAA.
In November it is very considerably cheaper to route SYD/SIN/JNB on Singapore than direct on SAA.
In those cases of course the flights are longer. But there is an upside to not flying SAA especially when you consider that you might end up on a Qantas flight, two of the world's truly appalling customer service airlines.

"I've heard that SAA are blaming it on poor star alliance connectivity in London reducing loads" That'll be the demise of bmi's LHR operation then. But the only useful connections that they've lost from this would be MAN, EDI, ABZ, BHD and DUB (I can't see why one would want to route via LHR for any other Star Alliance connections).

Funny old thing, but Virgin manage without any alliance connections. What are they doing right that SAA aren't?? (That was a rhetorical question, by the way!)

They'd have to blame someone! I';m surprised they have'nt played the 'race' or 'previously disdvantaged' card, although Theunis Potgieter would hardly fit into that category!

"... continuing to ensure excellent business and tourism links between the Western Cape and the UK with our significant capacity via Johannesburg," UK tourists don't want to go via somewhere to get to Cape Town, and if they did they would use the very good links from LHR, GLA, NCL and MAN via the Middle East!! (SA tourists going northbound would most likely use those Middle East routes because they are cheaper!)

"A thorough analysis of the route made it clear that we could use our aircraft more profitably elsewhere..." Better links to the future colonial masters in the East?

Or is this all a smoke-screen for a revenue-raising plan to sell that valuable slot at LHR?

CPT-LHR has been an SAA route for a long, long time. 35yrs+?

SAA
 

I have no idea how long they have been doing that route,but I understand from fellow-travellers (I have been flying between the US East Coast and SA for over 20 years) that a very large percentage of potential customers would actually prefer NOT to fly to Johannesburg and then connect to Cape Town------they would much prefer to fly to the Mother City direct from the US,or at least have the option.I think SAA used to do that from Miami long ago and I enquired recently whether Delta were considering the route,but nothing seems to be happening.A friend so dislikes deplaning in Johannesburg that he flew from JFK to Dubai with Emirates and then with Emirates straight to CPT.He says that it was an excellent experience.
SAA would benefit from some cabin-crew training,in my opinion.The crew are really charming & pleasant,but the chattering and laughing all night in the galley is not on.

No foreign tourist in their right minds (ie. the second time they came to South Africa) would want to go anywhere near the stinking crime-ridden overcrowded cesspit that is Johannesburg.

Durban would make a far better hub for the tourists who wanted to go to the game farms.

Cape Town is far better for the Garden Route, and for everything Cape Town and the Western Cape have to offer.

But the hub thing makes a bit of sense.

What doesn't is how SAA can't make the route pay in a brand new 330 when BA make good money using a 747 and Virgin do the same in an old, and according to SAA, gas-guzzling, 340.

If they can't make that route pay then they should just pay their 8000 employees R750k a year each to sit at home and do nothing (yes folks, that R6billion right there) and save the country the carbon footprint, and at the same time save the rest of us from having to put up with them.

In fact if they packed up, they would give the other honest airlines like 1Time and Comair the chance to do business on a level playing field, take over the SAA market share which would increase tax revenues for the government immediately.

Yes, amazingly enough.... it would pay to pack up the whole of SAA and Mango, pay the ex-employees R60k a month for ever and you still end up with a nett GAIN! Shows how dire and farcical the situation actually is.

It's not as bad as you make out. CPT has more crime per capita than JNB but it's less violent crime. Parts of JNB are safer than parts of many UK cities (and those in other countries), and some of JNB's suburbs are glorious. The city has a great climate, a good infrastructure, friendly people, lots of interesting places, culture, and some world class restaurants. And I'm not even from Joeys!

As for the rest of your comments, I'm 100% in agreement.

And to answer your question :

It's carrying baggage both on the ground, political appointees (prev-i-usly dis-udvantaged) and in the air (friends and family of the former on freebies and rebate tickets filling seats in the front end. That's why BA can make a profit on the route and SAA can't. SAA's aircraft are less economical but not to such an extent.

"Parts of JNB are safer than parts of many UK cities"...?????!!!!

Which parts? The parts that are behind barbed wire with 'armed-response' alarms?? No barbed wire with 'armed-response' alarms in UK cities!!!

You comparison with Cape Town is fairly accurate: It came above Jo'burg in a recent "world's most dangerous cities" report. (NO UK cities were listed in that report!)

Is SAA scaling down their LHR operations because their crew get arrested more often there than elsewhere?