After the Bell: Can anyone make Mango Airlines great again?

Daily Maverick

6 days ago

SAA is back in the fray, while Mango Airlines is still trying to get out of business rescue — but why would anyone want to enter this space now?
Despite the fact it is usually long, boring and tiresome, flying can still exert a powerful pull on my imagination. I think it must be because, while you are sitting in a large metal tube with about a hundred people you've never met, the world literally changes around you.
It's the glint of the sun off the wing, the powering through the fluffy cloud, the squares of blue as the pools of Boksburg do their thing, then the line of the Orange River, the incredible mountains of the escarpment, a quick hop over the sea and the glorious green of the Western Cape.
Despite that magic, a flight can often be a chance to do some work quickly, to get something done in the one place where no one can bother you.
It's a kind of end of innocence, that feeling, in a way.
In our market we've seen quite a few changes.
South African Airways (SAA) is now back in the fray, while Mango Airlines is still trying to get out of business rescue.
Fin24 reported earlier today that despite a court ruling preventing the business rescue practitioner at Mango, Sipho Sono, from selling the airline to an investor, that investor was still keen to go ahead.
News24 has suggested that a company called Ubuntu Air Services is pretty keen on buying Mango.
There are so many questions here.
Professional and competent
Firstly, surely a business rescue practitioner, as professional and competent as they must be, does not get to decide to sell something that belongs to the government. It belongs to all of us, and those who are democratically elected should decide (as likely as they are to repeat silly mistakes).
But secondly, I just don't get why someone would want to enter this space now.
It seems incredibly competitive. FlySafair was able to keep its planes, and crucially its pilots, flying during most part of the Covid pandemic. As a result, its pilots had kept their hours up and could return to normal service pretty quickly.
Because SAA was shut down and almost mothballed during that time, it took a long time to recover.
I've found that, generally speaking, FlySafair is incredibly professional. I know companies that will book only with them because they really do seem to keep to time. And for businesses, nothing else matters. They'll pay the extra (if there is extra to pay) just for that reliability.
That said, a few months ago I went on an SAA flight for the first time in years. Literally years.
In 2017, my wife was going on a work trip to France and I warned her not to fly SAA at all. She was quite surprised by my emotion on the issue. But I pointed out that it was about to go bankrupt, and could run out of money to buy fuel literally anywhere in the world.
I mean Dudu Myeni was still the chairperson at the time … so anything could happen.
And as much as she would enjoy France, she would be stuck there.
My first indication I was back on SAA was an email from them asking if I wanted to buy the seat next to me. While the flight had been booked by a company, I could, for not much money, ensure that the seat next to me was empty. It was easy to pay with my credit card.
While not much of a gambler, I decided to take the risk and see if I got it for free.
And I did. The person on the other side of our free seat told me she'd taken the same gamble.
As a pair of winners, we both agreed that flying on an SAA plane brought back a flood of memories.
I had been taken back to a time before flying lost its lustre. Even the in-flight staff, incredibly professional and welcoming, were a reminder of an almost previous age. Back when flying was still magic.
It lasted until the moment I got my iPad out and got back to work.
Happy memories
Those happy memories must be a wonderful help to SAA now.
I feel literally stuff-all for Mango.
When I worked at the SABC, I always knew that if I was flying anywhere, it would be on an SAA ticket. Parastatal to parastatal, if you know what I mean.
I used to groan when the SAA flight became a Mango flight (how did that happen all the time, I wonder?).
My memory of them was that they were just always late. You were always sitting in the airport waiting for the bloody thing to arrive. And when it did, you knew that it was going to be a horrible rush.
And while SAA gave you an in-flight meal (and, amazingly, a drink) on Mango, you got an R80 voucher.
I used to get so incensed that I'd use the voucher to buy one or two things and then ask the other passengers around me what they'd like. I was determined to use the full value of the voucher just to spite them.
The poor steward's expression suggested I was not the first person who'd done this.
So, I can't really understand who'd want to take up Mango now. It doesn't seem to have any assets that are really worth using. It doesn't have planes, or even routes.
Maybe someone has a better understanding of the aviation industry than I do. Maybe there's a gap in the market somewhere.
But I think to make Mango fly again is going to require an awful lot.