Embattled State-owned national carrier South African Airways affirmed in a press release on Wednesday that its turnaround strategy was “on track”. It reported that its results for the first quarter indicated that it was “ahead of the plan in its trading performance”. But the release did not give the first quarter results.

The company reaffirmed that it would not be able to reach break-even until 2021. However, it was continuing to drive down costs and increase its revenues. It assured that it could draw on the required financial facilities to support its working capital needs.

“The airline has made some headway in the implementation of its turnaround plan to transform SAA into a commercially viable entity, which must have the ability to sustain itself financially and remain competitive operationally,” stated the press release. “No decisions have been taken to dispose of any SAA entities or assets at this stage. Options were merely presented to the Board [at a strategy session earlier this month] for consideration.”

The SAA turnaround plan had now, “for the first time”, been fully costed. Its successful implementation depended on the achievement of “certain enablers”. These included the fulfilling of the R21.7-billion funding requirement over three years, as well as “aggressively” reducing costs (by means of smart procurement and “optimal organisation design”), transforming SAA Technical to improve its efficiency, and optimising revenues and rationalising the airline’s network.

The government, which is the shareholder in SAA, had been informed of the financial needs of the group, and was considering the question. The airline was in continuing discussions with the lenders who, in 2017, agreed to give it conditional extensions on maturing loans (which will come due in March next year).

“Since the implementation of one of the key initiatives on revenue optimisation and network rationalisation, SAA has seen encouraging positive financial performance for Quarter one of this financial year,” it assured. “These results are borne out of network changes and capacity redistribution SAA implemented earlier this year in its route network. … We remain focused on implementing the turnaround plan and we are seeing positive results.”