FASTJET will defer the
launch of Fastjet South
Africa to 2020. The
airline’s South Africa-based
holding group said in a
statement on its website that
its plans to launch Fastjetbranded operations in South
Africa had been pushed
back from the previously
announced 2019 to 2020
The airline already has a
platform for entry into the
South African market, having
concluded its investment in
Federal Airlines (FedAir) in
October last year.
Fastjet Group says, due
to the impact of the recent
cyclones in Mozambique
and the Zimbabwean
government’s decision in
January to introduce a new
virtual currency, the real-time
gross settlement (RTGS)
dollar, and its immediate
devaluation against the US
dollar, it has had a seasonally
weaker demand in the first
quarter of the year.
It has restructured its
Zimbabwean cost-base
to save on scarce foreign
currency. It also relocated
its passenger call centre
support function from Cape
Town to Harare during the
first quarter of this year, and
has restructured its headoffice support infrastructure
in Johannesburg, resulting
in a labour cost reduction of
approximately 30% year-onyear.
In preparing FedAir to
have the ability to operate
a Fastjet-branded airline
on its own in SA in 2020,
the Group has registered
one of the four ERJ145s
it acquired in December
2018 on the FedAir aircraft
operating certificate. FedAir
will support the Zimbabwean
operation on an aircraft,
crew, maintenance and
insurance basis from July.
This will allow FedAir to gain
its own operational expertise
on the ERJ145 fleet and
replace long-term support
from Solenta Aviation (South
Africa) for additional aircraft
and crew supply.
Fastjet expects to generate
a marginal underlying
operating profit for 2019,
making way for the brand
entry into South Africa in
2020.
