No matter how they frame it, South Africa's most efficient airline had no choice but to seek a local owner to keep its planes in the sky.
No, this is not a B-BBEE deal - but it was a race to the finish to keep the continent's "most on-time airline" in the sky. In January FlySafair launched a last stand to test the Air Services Licensing Council of South Africa's interpretation of the South African Citizenship Act in court.
The chosen hill for this battle was the act's wording. FlySafair argues that because 75% of the company's shares are held by trusts and companies based in SA, it is compliant with the act's "natural persons" definition.
Semantics, of course, is the currency of law. And if the airline can get legal backing for its view, it would (strangely) be a moral victory in a historic fight for survival that started before it took its first flight - in 2014 when Comair tried to smother FlySafair in its cradle.
Comair, as some would remember, was also subject to a pandemic-era takeover bid from FlySafair's betrothed Harith General Partners.
What the law saysUser ZAAirlineFundi wrote a helpful explainer of FlySafair's regulatory troubles on the avcom.co.za forum:The International Air Services Act 60 of 1993 states in Section 17 (5) A that:(5) For the purposes of subsection (4)(a) [the granting...
