South Africa is evaluating assets it could sell to pay for this month’s ZAR2.2b (US$169.5m) bailout of unprofitable South African Airways, Finance minister Malusi Gigaba said in letter to parliament. The govt’s decision to settle a debt owed by the airline to Standard Chartered mustn’t affect the balance of this year’s budget, Gigaba said in the note to Baleka Mbete, speaker of the National Assembly. Further details will be provided in October, he said. South Africa’s economic downturn, the downgrading of the country’s foreign-currency debt and a “rapid deterioration” of SAA’s cash flow triggered the need for “urgent action” regarding the airline, Gigaba said. The bailout prevented SAA from defaulting on the loan, which would have led to cross defaults of almost ZAR14.6b of other debt, he said. <br/>
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United Airlines CE Oscar Munoz apparently meant it when he recently said he wanted to empower his tens of thousands of frontline employees to use more common sense and good judgment as they go about their daily task of serving hundreds of thousands of passengers. Munoz has doubled down on that goal in the wake of April's infamous man-dragged-from-plane incident at O'Hare International. To open up a deeper dialogue about how Munoz and his senior management can work with frontline staffers to put more common sense and good judgement into the system, Munoz travelled Thursday to O'Hare International for the first of a series of "listen-and-learn" sessions with customer service representatives and gate agents — a session that will be replicated at other principal United hubs. <br/>
Pilots of an Air Canada jet failed to use a ground-based guidance system when they nearly landed by mistake on a taxiway at San Francisco International 2 weeks ago, potentially coming within dozens of feet of airliners on the ground, according to people familiar with the investigation. As more details emerge about the incident, these people said, investigators have tentatively determined the crew didn’t utilise the available instrument landing system US carriers typically require pilots to rely on for precision approaches in similar circumstances. The issue hasn’t been reported before, and it isn’t known why the crew failed to call up the instrument system for backup during the visual landing prior to breaking off the approach. <br/>