The government has provided support to SAA to the best of its ability and is still working on giving it additional funding, finance minister Tito Mboweni said on Thursday.
As of Wednesday evening, the government was “still trying to find additional funding for SAA”, Mboweni told a media conference ahead of his trip to the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
“Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” he said.
Business Day reported on Wednesday that the national airline, which has accumulated losses of R28bn over the past 13 years and has been kept afloat by state bailouts, could be forced to suspend flights by January 19 after R2bn in Treasury funding towards its business-rescue failed to materialise.
SAA was placed in business rescue in December as it did not have working capital to fund operations.
Mboweni, who has previously advocated selling or closing the airline, said that given its financial and operational crises, the country has reached a point at which “certain decisions have to be made”.
The minister, who is travelling to Switzerland on Sunday, quipped that he would most probably be flying with Swiss International Air Lines.
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