South African Airways administrators hope to exit by month-end

The administrators of SAA hope to hand control of the business back to management by the end of the month, the state-owned airline said in a letter to affected parties. SAA has been under a form of bankruptcy protection since December 2019, and its fortunes worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. All operations were mothballed in September 2020 when funds ran low. The letter, dated March 18, said SAA’s board of directors and management were working on a plan to resume flights, without giving a date when that might happen. The administrators said they had received 7.8b rand ($529m) out of a 10.5b rand bailout allocated in the government’s October mid-term budget. Out of that, around 360m rand has gone towards paying unpaid salaries, 1.5b rand has been spent on severance packages and 400m rand has been transferred to creditors who lent money after the airline entered administration.<br/>