South African Airways (SAA) acting board chairman Ms. Duduzile Myeni claims that the airline's latest turnaround plan, its ninth in 13 years, set to be presented on either March 28 or 2 April, will be "cutting edge" and will be more successful than its eight predecessors because it has been developed and "owned by our own people".
Ms Myeni made the comments before a South African Parliamentary Public Enterprises Portfolio committee inquest.
The 20 Year long term strategy plan, developed by SAA's new board following the mass board resignation scandal of 2012, may bring with it the possibility of various route redundancies, Myeni said.
SAA Acting CEO, Nico Bezuidenhout, for his part, claimed, in some rather managerial language, that the carrier's new strategy was "holistic" and aimed to at achieving "sustainable" business. How sustainable this business plan will be without the South African government at hand to constantly inject funds into the ailing carrier, Mr Bezuidenhout did not say.
Bezuidenhout said the new strategy aimed to take the best elements of the previous ones, "developed, in the past, at great expense", and implement them.
"In my subjective opinion, 70% of the issues [with the airline to date] have been directly related to failure to implement."
Source [EngineeringNews]
In the run up to today's report, in a statement last week, the same Parliamentary Public Enterprises Portfolio committee said it had become increasingly uneasy about SAA's future following the suspension of acting CEO, Vuyisile Kona.
"The committee recommended and appealed to SAA to expand on its strategy and give regular progress report on implementation. Actually the committee is not surprised at all with the latest developments at SAA,” Peter Maluleka, chairperson of the committee, said.
Source [Fin24]
South Africa's main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, has tossed its hat into the ring and called for SAA's privatization should the carrier fail to turn itself around within 5 years of executing its latest turnaround plan.