Johannesburg – South African Airways (SAA) said on Wednesday that its legal counsel would study the judgement and advise it on how to proceed on litigation involving anti-competitive behaviour with Comair.
This comes after the South Gauteng High Court awarded Comair a R1.16 billion settlement in its case against SAA in respect of its travel agent incentive schemes, which was found to be anti-competitive.
Comair had accused SAA 14 years ago of implementing an incentive scheme to travel agents that kept the agents loyal to the state-owned airline and excluded competitors, a violation of the Competition Act.
In terms of the judgement, SAA was ordered to pay Comair R554 million plus interest at 15.5 percent, and costs amounting to about R1.16 billion.
Though SAA said it would not debate any merits of the case in the media, spokesperson Tlali Tlali said this was one of the legacy matters, dating back to the period between 1999 and 2005 and implemented by the then management team.
Tlali said all of those managers left the airline a while back and new business management processes were since introduced to ensure compliance with all relevant prescripts.
"The current management is focused on turning the business around to ensure that SAA is commercially viable, operationally competitive and financially self-reliant in the shortest time possible," he said.
"A number of interventions will be implemented and others have already been initiated aimed at ensuring positive business improvements take place in a matter of months."