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No bailouts needed: SAA’s comeback story takes flight

With no more government guarantees, SAA is growing its fleet, adding new routes, and contributing billions to the economy.

Liesl Bartlett
Written by
Liesl Bartlett
City Editor, Time Out Johannesburg & Pretoria
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tupungato | Airbus A330-200 of South African Airways at London Heathrow airport. The airline is owned by Government of South Africa and flies to 42 destinations.
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For the first time in over a decade, South African Airways (SAA) is charting its own course, independently. Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy confirmed during her department’s 2025/26 Budget Vote speech that the national airline is now operating without government guarantees, fully self-funding its operations, fleet expansion and route growth.

The turnaround is striking. After years of bailouts, business rescue, and public doubt, SAA reported a profit of R252 million for the 2022/2023 financial year, its first in more than ten years. According to a 2021 study by Oxford Economics Africa cited by Creecy, SAA contributed R9.1 billion to the national GDP in 2023/24, a figure projected to more than triple to R32.6 billion by 2029/30. Employment linked to the airline is expected to grow from 25,000 to over 86,700 jobs in that same period.

Now leaner, focused, and profitable, SAA is actively pursuing regional and global route expansion, with new services launched from Johannesburg and Cape Town aimed at improving intra-African connectivity. The airline has also begun a measured fleet expansion to meet rising demand, positioning itself as a serious connector of people, trade, and tourism across the continent and beyond.

SAA remains open to a strategic equity partner to support its long-term growth ambitions, but with unencumbered assets and restored financial health, the airline is no longer the burden it once was. Instead, it’s reemerging as a valuable national asset and a rare example of a state-owned enterprise back on solid ground.

Minister Creecy took a moment to acknowledge the work of the outgoing interim board, led by Chairperson Derek Hanekom, for their role in stabilising and growing the airline since its emergence from business rescue.

As South Africa looks to strengthen its aviation, logistics, and tourism sectors, SAA’s independent flight path offers a hopeful blueprint and one well worth watching.

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