In the aftermath of the natural death of SA Express, respected aviation expert Phuthego Mojapele believes government should have protected the airline from extinction, describing its liquidation as a heavy blow to aspiring young black aviators.
In an interview with Sunday World, Mojapele said the current airlines in operation had no desire to absorb young black people into their fold.
“The setup of SA Express was primarily to advance the black majority that were excluded from entering the aviation space. Those are young people coming from the rural and the most impoverished areas. That programme worked very well.
“We have a number of those aviation professionals who joined at the time and they are now in the Middle East some are captains in Qatar, Turkish Airways China and operating airlines there,” he said.
The South Gauteng High Court sealed the fate of the state-owned regional airline when it declared a final liquidation order earlier this month. It has been grounded since April 2020 leading to the provisional liquidators concluding that there were no prospects to save it.
The airline took to the sky in 1994 and was founded as a vehicle for black economic empowerment in the aviation sector.
Mojapele lamented that black aviators have been deprived to continue to grow the number of young people that are still at flying schools that were ordinarily going to be considered by SA Express.
“SA Express had been a successful story because it never asked for handouts. There were provinces who were subsidising the airline to fly into their airports.”
The only real chance of saving the airline came courtesy of a consortium of employees who had made a proposal to acquire the airline’s tangible assets. The plan was foiled when the Air Service Licensing Council responsible for awarding and revoking airline licences cancelled it services leaving it with no tangible assets.
But Mojapele said there were many other solid black businesses owners who wanted to bail out the airline but some influential people wanted it dead at all costs.
“This is sad because the progress that black professionals within the aviation space had made was extinguished just like that. There were many other people who wanted to assist including Santaco. Before they made a bid for Mango, they made a proposal for SA Express.”
He added that in their quest to save the airline, the consortium of workers had reached out to other African markets such as Kenya and Ethiopia and many other countries who wanted come on board.
On the other hand, the department of Public enterprises said the crowd-funding initiative by the employees was unsustainable because it had no financial resources to sustain the business post the sale.
“Due to the current fiscal constraint, government was unable to provide the post commencement finance to implement a successful rescue process,” the department explained.
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