Airlink loses case to retrieve revenues held by former partner SAA

South African carrier Airlink has failed to convince the country’s Supreme Court of Appeal that it is owed R510m ($33m) in ticket funds held by South African Airways. The court has upheld a Gauteng high court decision rejecting Airlink’s claim to the ticket revenues collected by SAA on its behalf, following SAA’s entering business rescue in late 2019. “While Airlink fully respects [the court order] dismissing the case, it is nonetheless disappointing and demonstrates that the law is not always just,” says Airlink, following the 30 November judgement. Airlink had a long-standing alliance with SAA including a commercial agreement under which passengers could book Airlink flights through SAA’s reservations systems and Airlink flights carried the SAA designator code ‘SA’. Airlink was granted this access for a basic fee plus a royalty of 1% flown revenues. SAA would then periodically remit to Airlink the revenues received for the Airlink ticket sales, less commissions, fees and taxes. The dispute centred on revenues collected from November 2019 up to the point when SAA entered business rescue on 5 December 2019. At the time business rescue commenced, SAA’s rescue practitioner had argued that the revenues amounted to a pre-commencement debt to Airlink and therefore could not be paid.<br/>