South Africa’s Comair suspends flights over money woes
South African carrier Comair has suspended all flights as its funds run dry. The carrier operates flights under two brands, British Airways (a franchise) and Kulula. The airline has said that it won’t resume operations until sufficient additional funding has been secured.
The past few years have been rough for airlines in South Africa, with both South African Airways and Comair entering business rescue due to financial troubles. The airlines aren’t out of the woods yet, with Comair adding a new saga to the story late yesterday evening.
Yesterday evening Comair revealed that it would be suspending all flights until further notice. In a statement, the airline revealed that the company’s business rescue practitioners were left with no other choice.
The practitioners are in the process of raising additional funds so that flights can restart, and they seem to be confident that they will successfully secure these funds. This isn’t the first time Comair’s flights have been suspended this year. Regulators grounded the airline’s fleet for five days in March.
Commenting on the latest flight suspension, the airline’s CEO, Glenn Orsmond, remarked, “We deeply regret the inconvenience this suspension will cause our customers. We did everything we could to avoid it. Comair, the BRPs and the lenders are working all out to get the funding in place so that we can resume our normal flight schedule as soon as possible. Comair is inherently a viable business. We have the two of the best airline brands in the country.”
According to schedule data from Cirium, Comair was due to operate 32 flights today, with Johannesburg-Capetown seeing the most flights at six in either direction. All of the flights were domestic flights, operating between just five airports;
CPT – Cape Town
DUR – Durban
GRJ – George-Arpt
HLA – Johannesburg
JNB – Johannesburg
Flights won’t resume until sufficient funding has been secured, but it isn’t clear how long this will take. Over the entire month of June, the airline has 1,093 flights scheduled, equating to 205,905 seats on sale.
Not operating these flights means that Comair will end up refunding passengers rather than taking more cash as ticket sales are currently suspended.
