• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Singing and dancing as South Africa’s national airline returns to the skies

September 23, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 23, 2021

By Siphiwe Sibeko

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Jubilant South African Airways (SAA) staff at the country’s biggest airport broke into song and dance on Thursday as the airline took to the skies for the first time in around a year.

State-owned SAA’s longstanding financial woes were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and it halted all operations last September when it ran out of funds. The company exited administration https://ift.tt/3AC9Dv1 in April thanks to another massive government bailout.

It restarted domestic flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town on Thursday and next week will launch a slimmed-down international service to five African capitals: Accra, Kinshasa, Harare, Lusaka and Maputo.

“After so many months we’ve been waiting for this moment, I am so excited. I am over the moon,” Mapula Ramatswi, an SAA flight attendant told Reuters at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport.

“I’m actually emotional the fact that it’s happening today, we never thought it would happen.”

Ramatswi said the many months when SAA was grounded were difficult financially, but her family had helped her pull through.

Her colleagues sang church songs, ululated, clapped and danced nearby as an SAA plane with its tail fin bearing the colours of the South African flag took off.

The government has said it will sell a majority stake in SAA to a local consortium, and a due diligence process has been mostly completed. But the share purchase agreement has not yet been signed.

The planned sale of a 51% stake in SAA is part of government efforts to halt repeated bailouts to ailing state firms like SAA and power utility Eskom that have placed massive strain on stretched public finances.

(Additional reporting by Sisipho Skweyiya; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Source Link Singing and dancing as South Africa’s national airline returns to the skies

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. BMW Group’s Neue Klasse lineup to focus on circular economy to achieve reduction in CO2 emissions
  2. Japan considering easing some COVID-19 emergency restrictions – media
  3. Haiti official resigns over PM’s links to suspect in president’s slaying
  4. U.S. officials to hold semiconductor supply chain meeting

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • A Forgotten 19th Century “Vortex” Model Of The Atom May Help Explain Why The Universe Exists At All
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, But Don’t Expect MAHA Action
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction
  • “It Seemingly Put On An Otherworldly Show”: Watch As This Beautiful Deep-Sea Octopus Glides Gracefully Through The Ocean
  • Have You Heard About America’s Government Cheese Caves? They’ve Got Over 600 Million Kilograms Of The Stuff Stashed Away
  • There Could Be A Surprising Health Benefit To Having Gray Hair
  • New Answer To The Fermi Paradox? Cognitive Horizon Hypothesis May Explain Why Aliens Haven’t Contacted Us
  • What Happened When Patient B-19 Was Given A Brain Stimulation Device And A Button?
  • The Ice Age Squirrel That Enabled A Plant’s Resurrection 31,800 Years Later
  • The First Video Game Came Long Before Pong And Was Invented By A Manhattan Project Physicist
  • Monster Hoaxes In The Age Of AI: Seeing Isn’t Believing Anymore
  • Everyone Thought This Ancient City Was Destroyed By Plague. A New Analysis Says It Never Happened
  • The “Mind’s Eye” Doesn’t Focus Like Our Vision, Even For People Who Have One
  • Strep Throat Or Sore Throat: What’s The Difference?
  • Reptiles “Pee” Crystals, But What Are They Made Of? Scientists Wanted To Find Out
  • A Vaccine For Stomach Ulcers Might Be On The Cards, And It Could Fight Off Cancer Too
  • Only One Place On Earth Now Remains Mosquito-Free As Iceland Records First-Ever Sighting
  • This Is One Of The Only Groups Of People Outside Africa Who Had Virtually No Denisovan DNA
  • Puzzling “Transient” Lights In The 1950s Skies Focused Around Nuclear Testing Facilities, Intriguing Study Finds
  • The Maya Calendar Had A Way To Predict Eclipses That Was Accurate For Centuries
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version