South African’s Flight Cuts Aren’t as Ambitious as They Sound

South African

It seems like any time a failing, government-supported airline plans to restructure, it’s mostly lipstick on a pig. I think of airlines like Air India, Aerolineas Argentinas, and of course, my beloved Alitalia as perfect examples. Shuffle the deck chairs, get new funding, and voila, you have a “new and improved” airline that will just face the same problems a couple years down the road. South African has generally fallen into that group, but a recent proposal makes it sound like the airline is getting serious. Don’t get too excited. It’s not the dramatic move that it appears to be, but it is still significant.

The full so-called “Business Rescue Plan” will be presented in full to creditors by the end of this month. But for now, we know what’s happening to the network. On the surface, it looks like a massive cut. Of the 22 African destinations South African serves from Johannesburg, 8 will lose service. That’s a lot, until you realize that this is more of a technicality.

Here’s a look at that African map.

Even though South African says it’s pulling out of eight airports, it’s really only walking away from two.

Over in West Africa, Abidjan is served as a tag on the end of the Jo’burg to Accra flight. That unsurprisingly gets cut since it was clearly already barely worth serving by the airline if it was being run as a tag. The other loser is Livingstone in Zambia. Livingstone is just across the border from Victoria Falls, a short 45 minute drive between airports. Going forward, South African will only serve Victoria Falls, and that makes sense. Livingstone became more popular as Zimbabwe became less and less stable. That concern has subsided over the years, and Victoria Falls remains the more popular destination.

All those other routes that are getting cut aren’t really going away. They will be served either by Mango, South African’s low cost carrier which also sells tickets under the SA code, or Airlink, an independent regional that also sells tickets under the SA code. In fact, after this announcement, Airlink swooped in to say it would take over the flights to Entebbe, Luanda, Ndola, and Port Elizabeth. (Port Elizabeth and the other domestic South African destinations are already served more frequently by Mango.)

Cape Town will also see reduced service, but think about it this way. On a random Monday this March, South African has 12 flights each way while Mango has 8. South African may cut back, but there’s nothing suggesting Mango won’t fill the void. This really looks like a shift from the high-cost South African platform to the lower cost platform of its affiliates. From a customer perspective, travelers can still book flights on “South African” to all of these places except for the two I mentioned.

The intercontinental network cuts, on the other hand, actually look more significant. Flights to four cities will be cut completely.

South African Long Haul Map via Diio by Cirium

With the current downturn hitting China, it’s unsurprising to see Hong Kong and Guangzhou disappear. These are markets that are likely going to be hurting for some time, and South African can’t afford to hang on when it just needs to generate cash.

As for Munich, that’s an easy decision to make. South African already serves Frankfurt, and travelers can connect throughout the continent via Lufthansa. It’s hard to imagine how much value there is in serving both Frankfurt and Munich nonstop. Maybe Lufthansa will decide to pick this one up.

Lastly, Sao Paulo goes away. That always seemed like a thin route. There are few ways to get between Africa and South America, but there’s probably a good reason for that. The demand isn’t there.

This shift is undoubtedly being helped along by the aircraft issues at the airline. South African has no money, so it has struggled to refresh its fleet. It did somehow bring in 4 A350s this year which will fly flagship routes like New York and Frankfurt. But beyond those airplanes, it has an aging, inefficient widebody fleet.

The backbone of the long-haul fleet was a mix of A340-300s and A340-600s. Best I can tell, there are 5 or 6 -300s still flying around to places like Perth and Sao Paulo as well as African destinations. There are, I think, still 3 -600s flying, but they seem to be mostly isolated to random domestic routes. South African is trying to get out of this whole fleet one way or another.

That leaves the airline with what looks to be 5 operating A330-200s and another 5 A330-300s. Those seem to focus on flying to places like London, Munich, and Washington/Dulles via Accra in addition to intra-Africa flying.

By cutting all these international routes, I assume that means that the 4 A350s and some number of remaining A330s will be able to service the international network. Can’t afford more new airplanes? Great, just cut routes and get rid of the old ones.

We will learn more about South African’s plans when the full details are released, but as of now, this doesn’t seem like any sort of massive reorganization. It’s a pruning to get rid of the worst long-haul routes and the least-efficient airplanes while pushing off short-haul routes to lower-cost options. If it could get its labor house in order, then that might be enough. But labor relations always ends up being the problem in any government-carrier restructuring. Early indications are that South African doesn’t want to cut a lot of jobs, so that means we’ll just end up in the same place we are now a few years down the road.

Get Cranky in Your Inbox!

The airline industry moves fast. Sign up and get every Cranky post in your inbox for free.

16 comments on “South African’s Flight Cuts Aren’t as Ambitious as They Sound

  1. The real issue is whether SAA can cut employee costs. Shifting to Mango and airlink will help accomplish that IF they can cut SAA’s costs associated w/ serving those markets. S. African reorganization law is not like the US but my understanding is that the government has a lot less influence in the restructuring process than they have had in trying to influence decisions.

    On a larger scale, there will be lots of marginal airlines around the world that will be pushed to fix their problems this year in part because of the coronavirus and the loss of demand from China. SAA might have a head start. You could be spending a lot of time this year writing about the restructuring of an assortment of intercontinental airlines

  2. I still can’t understand why they have Mango competing directly with mainline on some markets; especially very important markets like JNB-CPT. On a 2 hour flight, who is going to pay a premium to fly SA?

    1. They aren’t really competing – it’s just what works best for scheduling and capacity, and since they codeshare you can buy all of the flights through SA anyway.

      It’s exactly how some medium-length domestic US flights are operated by mainline aircraft and the next flight on the same route by their regional partner.

  3. Your last paragraph nails it. The labor is going to be a much harder thing (as evidenced by all other airline examples you mentioned in the first paragraph).

    While cutting China and HKG works for SA, what about all the other airlines? I’ve been waiting for your post on what’s happening with all those brand spanking new 787s, A350s, and not so new 777s that are not longer flying daily to that side of the world. Globally it seems like a huge capacity cut that’s going to last for a while. What’s happening to all those airplanes and crews? *on the edge of my seat*

      1. Delta has already loaded schedules for the A350 and A330-900s replacing other aircraft (mostly A330-300s) to Europe. A couple additional A330-300s to Europe. 767s on domestic flights (ATL and DTW to the west)
        American has added a number of domestic flights including from LAX.
        United is increasing domestic widebody flying, mostly on routes that already see them.

        Not sure about the rest of the world

  4. Brett, this has probably been written before but I couldn’t see it, but why is there a stop in Accra on the flight to IAD? I was assuming fuel, but if NYC can do a non-stop, then surely IAD can also.

    1. Is S.Africa-NYC perhaps a market with more robust demand (ie business travel) and therefore capable of being self-sustaining as a nonstop ? I’m guessing that SAA pick up a fair bit of cash from people wanting to travel between Accra and the USA with connections into Star Alliance as a competitor to Delta’s Accra-NYC route

    2. Graham – I assume there’s demand in the local market, so they keep it. The airplane they use now can’t make it nonstop, so they’d have to use a different aircraft. They probably figure that it’s worth keeping the stop to get the locals in Ghana.

  5. Also remember that LATAM already serves GRU-JNB 5x weekly with an a350, so that’s another reason that SA chose to cut the route

  6. Brett, I feel even better about always choosing BA to Africa now.
    Interesting article.
    Thank you for keeping all of us informed. Susan Warrington

  7. How sad to see SAA fall so far! I flew on them back in 2003 with a routing of ATL-CPT/CPT-JNB-VFA/VFA-JNB-SID-ATL on 747-400, 737-800 and 737-200. Excellent service on all segments.

    A part of me hopes for a scenario of IAG coming in to snap up SAA, they switch to OneWorld, and merge the Comair operation into SAA mainline. This would greatly strengthen their core domestic network.

    1. A merger of SAA and Comair, along with their subsidiaries, would lead to a very strong monopoly that would definitely not be in the interest of citizens of South Africa. I really hope such a merger does not happen

  8. Good analysis of the South African situation. Very few South Africans fly SAA because it is SO much more expensive than Mango, Kalula, etc. I always assumed it remained to serve JNB connecting traffic. What I don’t know is how efficiently Mango is run. I assume “more efficiently,” but beyond that, I’ve never seen numbers.
    Dropping some of those ultra long haul thin markets is obviously smart if you need to focus on profitability. What worries me about SAA’s long haul ops is that I assume they’ve made money having a near-monopoly on USA flights. If the South African economy stays out of the tank, I’m certain the new fuel efficient aircraft will spark more interest from the 3 mega USA carriers. We saw that a little with UA in Cape Town. AA seems to be getting very ambitious with their int’l flying. I’m expecting to see a MIA-JNB announcement sometime in the future. It’s a no-brainer ultra long haul route for them — a lot better than Christchurch, I would think!

Leave a Reply to Jason H Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Cranky Flier