SA Express says its time for SAA to pay up money owed to them

SA Express has been battling to retrieve monies owed by SAA for the past two months said SA Express in a media statement. Photo: File

SA Express has been battling to retrieve monies owed by SAA for the past two months said SA Express in a media statement. Photo: File

Published Jan 29, 2020

Share

DURBAN - SA Express has been battling to retrieve monies owed by SAA for the past two months the regional airline said in a media statement. 

According to SA Express, the national carrier failed to pay revenues owed to SA Express as a consequence of SAA’s Business Rescue status. 

Now that SAA has received funds, the regional airline wants the money to be paid back.

SA Express said, "The said revenues are entitled to SA Express as SAA purely acts as an Agent for SA Express. The SA Express Board and Executive Management have been working with the SAA Business Rescue Practitioner (BRP) to resolve this matter over the last two months with no imminent way forward. The Board also took a resolution to engage with the Shareholder to resolve this pressing matter."

According to SA Express, and in line with the legal opinion received, the terms of its Commercial Agreement with SAA are clear. The revenue uplifted by SAA is property belonging to SA Express and does not form part of property belonging to SAA. As of 7 December 2019, SAA has been in unlawful possession of the collected revenue and has no right to retain the revenue collected.

Although the airline has been through many challenges, including a brief halt in operations in early 2018 as well as making efforts to recover after the detrimental aftereffects of corruption, SA Express hopes to close this matter and move forward to focus on strengthening and growing its business.

SAA bailout

Recently the airline's business rescue practitioners said that SAA will receive R3.5 billion of emergency funding from the government-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa.

"We can confirm that the Development Bank of Southern Africa has committed R3.5 billion in funding to the SAA Practitioners, with an immediate draw-down of R2 billion," said the team overseeing SAA's bankruptcy-protected restructuring.

BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE

Related Topics: