SAA Gaining Some Altitude

Figures Indicate Airline Is on the Up and May Be Approaching Break Even

- Hein Kaiser

AA may have some good news at last, but in an unusual move the airline is keeping mum on a potentially good news story concerning its road to recovery.

Figures seen by The Citizen suggest that the state-owned airline may be on its way to recovery with a network load factor on available figures of almost 72% achieved last year and yields seemingly growing in a northerly direction.

Yet, curiously, after almost a month of queries about potentially positive developments, the airline and its PR agency, Flow Communications, are silent.

Based on publicly available data, which excludes additional online direct sales, SAA's network average load factor for last year was around 72%.

According to the numbers, excluding direct and online bookings SAA carried just over 1.6 million passengers in 2024.

The Cape Town-Sao Paulo route emerged as the airline's top performer with a load factor of just over 78%. Other international routes such as Johannesburg-Lagos and Johannesburg-Mauritius also performed well, with load factors of more than 77% and 82% respectively.

The domestic picture takes on a reasonably solid shape, too. The highly competitive Cape Town-Johannesburg route achieved an average load factor of 78.6% while other local routes like Johannesburg-Port Elizabeth registered load factors around 70%, suggesting decent returns.