Austrian to commence Zadar service

GLOBAL AVIATION NEWS

SAA sold

South Africa agreed to sell a majority stake in the country’s grounded national carrier to a local jet-leasing company and private-equity firm, ridding the government of an entity that has long been a drain on state finances. A consortium comprised of Johannesburg-based Global Airways, which owns recently launched domestic airline Lift, and private-equity firm Harith General Partners will take a 51% shareholding in South African Airways (SAA), Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said. The government will retain a minority stake. The grouping named Takatso will invest as much as 3.5 billion rand ($258 million) over the next three years, Lift co-founder, Gidon Novick, and Harith Chief Executive Officer, Tshepo Mahloele, said in an interview. “Government will have no further financial obligations to the company, outside of the existing liabilities that they will settle”, Novick said. He added, “Route networks we are still working on, and it will be a phased roll-out based on demand re-emerging post Covid”. The sale of SAA comes about six weeks after the airline emerged from lengthy bankruptcy proceedings, having reduced its workforce by almost 80% and cut liabilities to about 2.6 billion rand. The next challenge is to resume international flights, though South Africa remains cut off from much of the world due to pandemic travel restrictions. A longer-term goal is to list the carrier on a stock exchange, Gordhan said. In the meantime, the government will retain special voting rights to ensure the airline remains in the country, among other national priorities. The deal represents a triumph of sorts for Gordhan, who has argued for the revival of SAA with the help of private investors while others were calling for it to be liquidated. While SAA is now “solvent and liquid,” business-rescue practitioners said when handing over the aircraft, subsidiaries including low cost arm Mango and maintenance firm SAA Technical remain under financial strain and are in the process of being recapitalized. The Department of Public Enterprises and the new consortium will together assess the future of the divisions as part of the due diliegence process, Gordhan said.
Source: Bloomberg

Austrian to commence Zadar service

NEWS FLASH

Austrian Airlines will launch operations to its fourth destination in Croatia next year after Zagreb, Dubrovnik and Split, with the introduction of daily seasonal flights from Vienna to Zadar. Services will be operated by the Airbus A320 aircraft and start March 29. It comes as Austrian and Eurowings look to work together in Vienna to better position themselves against Ryanair and its Austrian subsidiary Lauda. Further flight details for the new service can be found here.

Comments

Anonymous14:46
Austrian takes over the route from Eurowings and boosts it from 2-3pw to daily.

Still strange, they don't rather boost SPU from 5pw mid season and 7pw high season to 2x daily VIESPU to better cater for their most profitable connecting pax.
Also the schedule for the DBV/SPU/ZAD flights is weird, all US/Canada flights arrive in the morning about 7.30-8.30 am in VIE but flights to Croatian coast are all at same time about 5 hours later around 1pm to 1:15pm. Pretty long connections, if you ask me.
On the way back, they arrive in VIE in the afternoon about 4.15-5.00 pm and departures to US/Can are all between 10-11 am (next day!). Hence no connectivity at all. But hey, their CRO flights are packed (at very high fares) so I guess they still make very good business - but it seems they could profit even significantly more with better schedules and double dailies to DBV and SPU.
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Google Driver15:43
Zadar will boom next year again
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Anonymous21:09
I wasn't expecting a daily service, this is very good news. These flights will compliment the SPU service nicely.
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Austrian to commence Zadar service

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