Do budget airlines have a future in South Africa?
There are three low-cost, and three premiums. I think the right question is, will the premium guys survive, because they’re taking a big knock on market share right now. We’ve seen with Mango entering the market we’re still growing close to 25% year on year. The actual question is, is there room for three premium airlines? How did the Flitestar, Sun Air and Nationwide disasters hit your market? Well, they aren’t relevant for a few reasons. First, they were premium airlines, not low-cost airlines, and I’m not sure they failed. Perhaps they were closed down. It is an issue that we have a state-funded airline, trying to compete against us, relying on taxpayers’ money. But in our business we said, let’s focus on our own business, let’s not whinge and whine about Mango; we’re going to make ours work, and hopefully they make theirs work as well. What is the impact of higher fuel costs? If crude oil moves with $5, that impacts R15m a year on our costs, which translates to about R11 on an air
