Analysts call SAA’s recovery report complete ‘hogwash’
· Citizen
Though South African Airways’ 2025 annual report was meant to outline performance, recovery and direction, it instead delivered a document riddled with inconsistencies, leaving serious questions about both the accuracy of the numbers and the credibility of the reporting, according to an aviation analyst.
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The analyst said the report was troubling. “It is absolutely incomprehensible,” he said. “Every time you turn a page and look at the numbers, they are different.”
SAA’s 2025 report inconsistent – analysts
Of major concern, he said, was a pattern of inconsistencies across key operational metrics.
Passenger numbers, one of the most basic indicators of airline performance, do not align cleanly within the report. In one section, the airline reports carrying 1.9 million passengers.
Elsewhere, the report breaks this down into 1.07 million passengers in South Africa and 725 000 outside South Africa, which adds up to about 1.8 million, not 1.9 million.
“Nobody else in the SAA Group carries passengers, so it can only be SAA,” the analyst said. “You cannot separate it out. There is a massive gap there.”
Cargo figures raised similar questions. The report suggests that the airline transported more than 16 million tons of cargo, despite SAA not operating dedicated freighter aircraft.
Cargo figures raise questions
The analyst said that figure appeared wildly out of proportion to the airline’s current network and operations.
“Unless each passenger packed half a house on their trip, it’s farfetched. It is one of those numbers that makes you stop and ask whether anybody checked this document before it was published,” he said.
The analyst also criticised what he called basic presentation failures in the annual report. He said it was extraordinary that SAA had incorrectly presented key aviation metrics.
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“How can SAA make fundamental airline errors like measuring a key metric like available seat kilometres in rands when it should be measured in distance?” he said.
“That is not a small typo. That is basic airline language.”
Operational performance indicators, he said, also painted a less flattering picture than the report seemed to suggest. SAA reported on-time performance of 85%, below its own target of 88%.
While the report also highlighted improvements in areas such as baggage handling, the analyst questioned whether some of these measures were being used to pad out the appearance of operational progress.
“It starts looking like an attempt to throw in numbers for effect,” he said. “But when you strip it down to what is important, the airline is not performing particularly well.
‘Quality of report makes SAA uninvestable’
“I suppose if you pick certain numbers, you can say it looks better, but when you look at the full picture, it’s not.
“The quality of this report makes SAA uninvestable,” he said.
“The auditor-general’s disclaimer places huge question marks over the airline, yet Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy and the board as accounting officers rewarded executives with huge pay increases. As a taxpayer, I am not happy.”
He said the annual report, far from presenting a convincing recovery story, underlined concern about whether SAA was using selective disclosure and sloppy reporting to present a picture that is just short of smoke and mirrors.
“This is not just untidy. This is hogwash.”
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