South Africa’s oldest airline collapsing in front of everyone’s eyes

After billions in bailouts, business rescue proceedings, a failed takeover, and ambitious turnaround plans, South African Airways’s (SAA) acting CEO cannot confidently say whether the airline is making or losing money.

This comes after SAA’s latest financial statements were heavily criticised by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA).

In the AGSA’s Consolidated General Report on National and Provincial Government Audit Outcomes for 2024/25, it outlined the numerous issues SAA faces.

The AG acknowledged that, post-business rescue, the SAA board and management have been on a journey to rebuild the airline in line with its founding mandate.

“The board and management have made progress in stabilising operations as well as in implementing a route expansion plan,” the AG said.

However, this is where the good news ends. The airline has received a ‘disclaimed with findings’ audit opinion for the past seven years, including the latest 2024/25 financial year.

SAA has also experienced going-concern uncertainties for over six years and reported a R1.96 billion deficit for the 2024/25 financial year.

In 2024/25, the AG made 11 material compliance findings relating to the submission of SAA’s financial statements, performance report, and annual report.

The AG also highlighted problems with SAA’s asset management, consequence management, financial statement quality, procurement management, and revenue management.

SOE oversight and governance, strategic planning and performance management, and the prevention of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure were also issues the AGSA identified.

“These findings mean that the board of SAA does not have reliable data for measuring the entity’s performance. Ultimately, this slows down progress in rebuilding and growing the entity,” the AGSA said.

“The entity’s persistent failure to produce credible financial statements undermines measures that may have been implemented by the board in rebuilding the entity.”

“This poses a risk of the board relying on inaccurate financial and performance information when considering strategic matters.”

Questions surrounding SAA’s finances

Aside from the AGSA, aviation expert Guy Leitch has been a vocal critic of SAA’s latest financial statements.

SAA released its financial results for its 2025 financial year on 6 February 2026, in which the group reported a net profit of R155 million.

However, Leitch called this profit figure into question, citing several inconsistencies, multiple profit figures, and general uncertainty about how the group is truly performing.

SAA reported an operating profit of R366 million, but Leitch alleged that the airline is more likely operating at a loss of R317 million before tax, due to operating costs exceeding revenue.

This is not the first time SAA’s profit figures have been called into question. For the 2023/24 financial year, the airline initially reported a profit of R60 million.

However, this was only due to SAA recognising a R431 million gain after it scrapped certain debts from the business rescue period.

The carrier’s auditors later concluded that this R431 million gain should not have been shown as income for the 2023/24 year, but as income for the prior year.

Therefore, SAA had to restate its financial statements so that the R431 million was removed from the 2023/24 year’s profit, and moved to SAA’s retained earnings.

This saw South African Airways’s R60 million net profit, which it initially reported, turn into a net loss of R371 million.

To address these and other concerns, SAA and some of its board members appeared before Parliament’s Transport Portfolio Committee on 21 April 2026 to present its audit findings and annual report.

The AGSA also gave its own presentation to the committee, outlining its concerns about the national flag carrier’s financial performance and statements.

In this meeting, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy called SAA’s continued poor audit outcomes “beyond unacceptable”.

Amid all this scrutiny, SAA Group CEO John Lamola also resigned on 10 April, four years after taking the reins.

In his place, the CEO of SAA subsidiary Air Chefs, Matshela Seshibe, was appointed acting Group CEO at the end of April 2026.

The real question we should be asking

In a recent interview with The Money Show’s Stephen Grootes, Seshibe was asked about SAA’s repeated poor audit outcomes and uncertain financial health.

Grootes asked the acting CEO, “How would you describe the financial situation of SAA at the moment?”

In response, Seshibe merely said that SAA accepted the AGSA’s report “without reservation, with humility”.

“It brought to us a lot of lessons about the state of our accounting and financial recording, and we have started processes to rectify those,” he said.

The acting CEO then explained that SAA came out of business rescue in 2021, “and experienced very good growth in terms of recapturing market share and growth in the top line”.

He said the airline even increased its number of employees from 500 to around 1,500.

“Unfortunately, the maturity of the growth in the operations as well as the revenue was not matched at the same pace by the financial and the record keeping as well as the controls, as highlighted by the Auditor-General,” he said.

He said SAA has since set up internal mechanisms to improve controls, including audit steering and loss control committees.

“We have put governance at the centre of our strategy to ensure that not only are we growing, but we are doing so in a compliant manner,” he said.

When asked directly by Grootes whether the airline is breaking even or losing money, Seshibe was unable to provide a direct answer.

He said the question that should be on people’s minds is “around a key metric that is relevant to the times”, referring to the ongoing Middle East war. 

Seshibe said the conflict has “reconfigured” the airline industry, as jet fuel prices have increased by as much as 140%, forcing airlines to recover some of those costs through fare increases and other measures.

“SAA is not spared. We are playing that playbook ourselves to make sure that we protect our cash in this period,” he said.

“And to that degree, I’m comfortable that we’re riding through the storm. The business fundamentals are strong and solid, and in that sense, in the long run, you’re going to see a sustainably profitable airline.”

Again, Grootes asked for clarity on whether or not SAA is making or losing money. Again, Seshibe was unable to answer directly.

“For the moment, we are focused on generating cash and preserving cash,” he said.

“And like the rest of the industry, that is a key metric that I think, on a sustainability basis, we should all focus on the events happening in the Middle East.”

“It’s a cushion that is required to ride the storm, and then when things go back to normal, we will be in a much stronger position.”

This, he said, is because SAA is taking steps to redesign and reimagine the airline, as well as its business design and cost structure, “to come out stronger on the other side of the crisis”.