South African Airways lost over $700m in past two years: Documents

South African Airways (SAA) lost more than 10.4b rand ($700m) in the past two financial years, documents sent to lawmakers showed. SAA, which has not made a profit since 2011 and is dependent on government bailouts to remain solvent, suffered a crippling strike last month which pushed it to the brink of collapse. The airline has not publicly published its financial reports for the 2017/18 and 2018/19 financial years and has suffered concerns about whether it will be able to continue operations for at least 12 months. But a copy of an SAA financial report for the year ending in March 2018 showed a 5.4b rand loss, with the company’s liabilities exceeding its assets by around 13b rand. A separate presentation showed that SAA had made a loss of more than 5b rand in the year ending March 2019. Both documents were sent to lawmakers on parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts. <br/>