SAA is restructuring its
organisational design to
drastically cut costs and put a
structure in place that it says
will foster effective decisionmaking and accountability.
The new SAA group
operating model will divide
the airline into three business
units. The Domestic unit will
include Gauteng, Western
Cape, Eastern Cape and
KwaZulu Natal; the Regional
unit will be split into SADC,
East Africa and West and
Central Africa; while the
International unit will consist
of Regional Americas,
Regional Europe and Regional
Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Each area will be accountable
for its own load factors,
passenger numbers, RASK,
CASK, Margins, EBIT, NPS,
OTP, sales and break even
KPIs.
SAA ceo, Vuyani Jarana,
said the majority of
decisions had been made
locally in South Africa in the
past. The new operating
model will now launch
accountable teams focusing
specifically on improving
profitability per region.
Peter Davies, chief
restructuring officer at SAA,
says if one considered that
70% of SAA’s income was
generated outside South
Africa, it made sense to
allow international country
managers and their teams
more scope to make
decisions.
SAA revealed that its
organisational design project
commenced internally in
November with the airline
stating that its restructure
was expected to save
between R251m and R460m
during the 2019-2020
financial year alone.
Vuyani said as part of
the restructure, SAA had
been pursuing a number of
socially responsible ways
to address the airline’s
overstaffing problem. SAA’s
crew exit programme, which
has facilitated the airline’s
pilots and cabin crew to take
up a number of temporary
positions with other airlines,
is one example of this.
Vuyani said it assisted SAA
with short-term cost-cutting
but that the staff members
were not lost to the airline in
the long run. He added that
socially responsible options
such as early retirements,
sabbaticals and alternative
leave policies were also being
considered.
Currently the SAA group
employs about 9 500 people
with about 5 000 of these
falling under SAA itself
