Photo by: Reuters
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is expected to announce some funding to get SAA off the ground again.
The chair of the board of South African Airways, Thandeka Mgoduso, has resigned after having been in the position for about a year.
She was also a non-executive director of the embattled state-owned airline.
Her resignation comes ahead of Mboweni's medium-term budget policy statement, which he will present to Parliament on Wednesday afternoon. Mboweni may announce some funding to get the national flag carrier off the ground again.
While the business rescue plan for the airline anticipates that an additional R10.5-billion is needed to restructure the airline, some experts claim this will not be enough, pointing to the possibility of further bailouts needed in future.
The Department of Public Enterprises, SAA's shareholder, told Fin24 on Wednesday that Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, expressed his gratitude for Mgoduso's "contribution and efforts in steering the business towards a more sustainable future".
According to the DPE, a new interim board will be announced as part of an effort to create a new and completely restructured SAA, working with a new executive team "to take the airline to the skies in the new year".
Meanwhile, forecasts for airline passenger demand used by SAA's business rescue practitioners in their plans for a "new" airline are now outdated. At the time when the rescue plan was accepted by creditors in June this year, the International Air Transport Association anticipated airline revenue levels would be 60% of what they were during the 2019 calendar year within two years. The latest forecasts from the association, however, now anticipate an even weaker-than-expected recovery.