SA AIRWAYS, which this week terminated a costly agreement with Etihad Airways, is feeling the effects of a skills drain that will harm its efforts to navigate out of the crisis that has engulfed the airline.
Executives who have recently left the organisation have not been replaced. CFO Wolf Meyer and chief strategy officer Barry Parsons resigned; Nico Bezuidenhout, CEO of Mango and twice acting CEO of SAA, was demoted; and a fourth person, Sylvain Bosc, SAA’s chief commercial officer, a French national head-hunted for his turnaround skills, is under investigation for alleged impropriety.
The airline has an acting CEO, an acting CFO seconded from, SizweNtsalubaGobodo, no chief procurement officer and no strategy officer. Its board has four members, down from an average of 14.
It has been hammered by scandals often related to interventions made by its chair, Dudu Myeni, into the operations of the company. These included nixing a deal last year that would have allowed it to consolidate R14bn in expensive debt.
And the damage does not stop at executive level.
In the past couple of months the airline’s commercial department has lost five of its eight senior managers. The commercial division is responsible for the heart of an airline’s business as it does network planning and revenue management and has highly concentrated aviation skills. It has lost the GM of its SA business (its largest market), Ray Nkwe; SAA veteran Paul Pavlides, the head of ancillary revenue; its manager in the chief commercial office, Viwe Soga; and the head of global sales & alliances, Louis du Plessis. Du Plessis’s departure will hurt even more as he is responsible for two other portfolios: network planning & scheduling as well as revenue management & pricing.
Morale among SAA’s staff has tanked.
SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali was not able to comment on SAA’s vacancy rate and could not comment on how many managers had left the commercial division. Human resources GM Thuli Mpshe did not respond to a request for comment either.
Last month Mpshe, who was acting CEO after Bezuidenhout (before she was replaced by Musa Zwane), was targeted for alleged impropriety. Mpshe was encouraged to take “special leave” to allow serious allegations against her to be investigated. These include not following due process for the extension of Meyer’s contract and in the appointment of Bosc.
Two people with close knowledge confirmed the move against Mpshe. One said Mpshe is “a strong lady, she will fight hard”.
When contacted, Mpshe refused to either confirm or deny that allegations had been made against her or that she had been under pressure from the board to take special leave. “I have no comment on that issue,” she said.
Tlali insisted that Mpshe had not been suspended.
The cancellation of the agreement with Etihad was expected, as the route had performed far below expectations. It had caused losses of up to R30m monthly since it was initiated in March last year.
SAA had hoped using Abu Dhabi as a hub would bring an end to its massive losses on long-haul routes.