SAA is likely to get a 2b rand ($136m) boost from the government and another 2 billion from existing lenders as it enters rescue proceedings from Dec. 5, a minister said Thursday. “It must be clear that this is not a bailout. This is the provision of financial assistance in order to facilitate a radical restructure of the airline,” Pravin Gordhan, minister of public enterprises, said. SAA, which has not made a profit since 2011 and has depended on government bailouts, suffered an employee strike last month that forced it to cancel hundreds of flights and pushed it to the brink of collapse. On Wednesday, a deputy minister, declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters he had received a letter from the secretary of the cabinet which said President Cyril Ramaphosa had called for a change of approach on SAA and instructed the government to put the airline in a “voluntary business rescue process”. Outlining what is expected from the process - which Gordhan described as the “optimal mechanism” to restore confidence in SAA as it seeks a future equity investor - Gordhan said the 2b rand provided by existing lenders will be guaranteed by the government and repayable in future budgets. The government, via the national treasury, will provide another 2b rand in a “fiscally neutral manner” with the full recovery of capital and interest on existing debt not impacted by the rescue proceedings.<br/>
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Austrian Airlines and Eurowings Europe are in talks to expand a wet-lease contract from Jan. 1, 2020. Under the new strategy—and to better position themselves in the Austrian market—Austrian Airlines will take over Eurowings Europe’s network planning at the Vienna hub and will wet lease four Airbus A319s/320s from the LCC beginning Jan. 1. “We are already in talks to wet lease even more than four planned aircraft to Austrian. Nothing has been decided yet. This is a learning process for both sides,” Eurowings Europe Robert Jahn said. Some aircraft will operate from Vienna on routes with strong demand—including Barcelona, Birmingham, Nuremberg, Rome and Zadar—that are currently served by Eurowings Europe.<br/>