Cape Town - For an airline that is intent on cutting costs, South African Airways (SAA) has a strange way of showing it.

The airline has just reported a loss of R990m for the 2012/13 financial year, an improvement from a loss of R1.3bn in the prior year.

It is suffering from a decade of losses totalling more than R15bn and is implementing a turnaround plan that was tabled in parliament in February last year.

This turnaround strategy has never been fully disclosed to the public and benchmarks and milestones are unknown, which makes it impossible to judge if it is actually working.

One way to measure if a business is going to turn around is for it to keep an eye on staff numbers, and at SAA this is not happening.

The airline keeps employing people, and Minister of Public Enterprises Malusi Gigaba has made it clear that no one will be fired.

The problem then is why are more and more people being hired?

Headcount in the 2013 year reflects a 4% increase in staff numbers to 11 500 people.

This resulted in employee costs rising by 3% to R4.8bn from R4.7bn.

The airline has completely destroyed the work done by former CEO Khaya Ngqula, who reduced the staff complement by about 20% in 2008 in a fundamental restructuring excercise that cost the airline R400m that year.

View post:
SAA hits headwinds with R990m loss