Audrey D’Angelo
SAA had renewed the leases of some of the Boeing 737 800 aircraft it used on regional and domestic routes – some for five years and others for 10, Miguel dos Santos, Boeing’s director for commercial sales, said after discussions with the national carrier on Friday.
The airline has asked the government for up to R6 billion in funding to acquire a fleet of new-generation aircraft that use less fuel, to enable it to remain competitive with other airlines which, faced with soaring fuel costs, are doing the same.
Dos Santos said he also discussed the possible acquisition of new long-haul aircraft including Boeing’s 777, which was selling well worldwide and would be suitable for SAA’s new non-stop service from Johannesburg to Beijing, and its newly launched Dreamliner, which would be suitable for busy routes including those to Europe and Latin America.
Meanwhile, aircraft manufacturers Boeing, Airbus and Embraer are working together with several airlines to experiment with biofuels that cause less pollution than the fossil fuels now in use.
Several experimental flights have taken place using biofuels to supplement the jet fuel commercially available now.
Dos Santos said a biofuel alone was used for the most recent delivery flight of a new Dreamliner to the launch customer, All Nippon Airlines (ANA), the Japanese partner in the Star Alliance of international airlines to which SAA belongs.
“The whole airline industry is committed to finding an alternative to fossil fuel,” he said.
“We believe it will happen – the ANA delivery flight from Seattle to Japan has shown that it is feasible. We need to find a way of producing biofuels more cheaply and, meanwhile, every new plane that is being produced is using less fuel and emitting less carbon dioxide. There has been a dramatic fall in the amount of pollution they produce.
“The airline industry causes only 3 percent of man-made pollution – far less than several other industries including road traffic. Yet we are the industry being targeted with higher taxes,” he said.
Despite this, Boeing believes the industry will continue to grow, particularly in Africa, in response to demand from the growing middle classes.
SAA also has Airbus A319s in its domestic and regional fleet and recently acquired two more A380s on a temporary lease.