Africa-Press – South-Africa. SAA is trying to rebuild its fleet of available planes, but on a timescale and with financial terms that suppliers say are so improbable that the exercise will likely be extremely expensive.
On Thursday, the airline issued a request for bids for four Airbus A320-200 passenger planes configured to carry 138 passengers, 24 of them in business class.
Ideally it wants to lease those planes for three years, on a “power by the hour” basis, which would mean the craft are fully serviced and maintained, and SAA pays only for the time they spend in the air, but it will also consider paying a monthly fee.
What it will absolutely not do, is involve the government in the deal.
“SAA will not consider [proposals] for leased aircraft if any security is required over and above security usually requested and provided in respect of aircraft leases,” the state-owned company told potential bidders.
“In particular, SAA will not consider leases where any shareholder support/guarantee is required.”
In fact, according to the score sheet for the deal, SAA has a strong preference to pay no deposit at all, taking control of the planes with nothing but a promise to pay later.
It also wants the planes “in a short time frame”; the first next month, two more in July, and the last in August. Anything after September, its documentation suggests, will not cut it.
Between the financial risk and the speed of those conditions, such a deal will be extremely expensive, said potential suppliers of such planes – if it can be done at all.
“In our opinion there will be no or only very few takers for this SAA request, based on their offered terms and conditions,” one broker told News24. “We and our industry partners would certainly not accept these.”
SAA did not immediately respond to questions, including whether its call for planes was related to the risk of losing routes on which it was not operating.
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