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Africa|Business|Services|transport
Africa|Business|Services|transport
africa|business|services|transport

Covid-19 forces SAA to cut services

27th March 2020

By: Rebecca Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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State-owned national flag carrier South African Airways (SAA), which was undergoing business rescue, has scaled down its capacity because of the fall in air passenger demand. This is the result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has severely affected the global air transport industry. Under these circumstances, SAA made the decision to only operate flights which had the necessary load factors (and other business considerations) to warrant being scheduled. Flights which had been more severely affected by the decline in demand were cancelled.

“Notwithstanding the decline in demand, SAA continues to aggressively review its schedule to match capacity with demand to the extent possible,” reported SAA Chief Commercial Officer Philip Saunders. “Where feasible, we will consider options that include cancelling and merging flights.”

The airline had cancelled 162 flights for the period March 17 to March 31. Cancelled international flights numbered 38, while the other 124 were regional flights (that is, flights to destinations in Africa outside South Africa).

However, SAA was continuing to provide international, regional and domestic services for those people for whom air travel was essential and unavoidable. “Our priority is to assist those travellers wishing to repatriate to their home countries to do so as quickly and efficiently as possible,” he affirmed. “Naturally, this includes South African citizens abroad wishing to return home.”

On March 18 the South African Government implemented travel bans to and from countries defined as being high-risk regarding Covid-19. These included China, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US. These bans were temporary, but their duration was unclear.

SAA would also continue to operate services to (and from) destinations not yet affected by anti-Covid-19 travel restrictions. The airline, as far as permitted by the travel restriction conditions announced by the South African Government, would help “qualifying” passengers to transfer their flights to or from SAA destinations which were now classified as high-risk.

The airline announced flexible rebooking alternatives for its clients. “We have updated our Customer Reservation Policy to help our passengers defer their travel plans were possible,” he assured. “To this end, we have offered our customers one free ticket change, in acknowledgement of travel restrictions that are not of our customers’ own making.”

This policy covered SAA’s entire route network. It did not cover SAA low cost subsidiary Mango, nor separate State-owned regional airline SA Express, nor the completely unrelated and private-sector regional airline Airlink, unless the tickets for flights on these operators were issued by SAA, on its SA (083) ticket stock.

The new policy did not allow for refunds. However, what the airline called “other refunds” are allowed, in accord with the “applicable fare rules”. Passengers who had previously been “no-shows” (failed to turn up for their flights) were excluded from the waiver in the new policy. And the airline reserved the right to change or withdraw the terms of the conditions of the new policy without warning. “We thank our customers for their continued support and placing their thrust in South African Airways with their travel plans,” said Saunders.


Highlights

Fall in passenger demand has led SAA to scale down its capacity

SAA still providing services for those people for whom air travel was essential and unavoidable

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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