Airlink (South Africa) (4Z, Johannesburg OR Tambo) continues to fight ongoing media speculation that it may be the South African airline in which Qatar Airways (QR, Doha Hamad International) plans to invest.
“Airlink is always exploring opportunities and is in talks with a number of existing airline partners. However, we have not committed to any binding strategic equity investment in Airlink,” Chief Executive Officer and CEO Roger Foster said in response to a Bloomberg report that the Qatar Airways is in talks to buy a 20% stake in Airlink.
The Financial Times reported that Qatar Airways was nearing a deal to buy a stake in Airlink. “The two sides held detailed talks on an investment by Qatar Airways […] although no final agreement has yet been reached,” he claimed, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
This followed comments made by Qatar Airways Group CEO Badr Mohammed Al-Meer at the Farnborough Air Show on July 23 that a deal with a South African airline was at an advanced stage. He did not name the airline involved, but media speculation has turned to Airlink and South African Airways (SA, Johannesburg OR Tambo), which is again looking for a strategic investor.
Al-Meer said South Africa was the missing piece in the carrier’s African network, following a partnership with Royal Air Maroc (AT, Casablanca Mohamed V) in North Africa and an impending 49% investment in the East African carrier RwandaAir (WB, Kigali).
Foster told ch-aviation that he was evaluating mergers and acquisitions as an option to respond to tight competition on domestic point-to-point routes and to consolidate an oversupplied South African market. He said Airlink maintains constant communication with its global partners and is always exploring opportunities for collaboration. “Some of them are candidates for possible closer cooperation,” he said. As well as Qatar Airways, Airlink is also code-shared and a major supplier to Qatar Airways’ competitor Emirates, a relationship that would play a role in any decision. Other codeshare partners include United Airlines, Lufthansa, British Airways and Swiss.
Earlier this month, Foster told ch-aviation that he was awaiting the outcome of a challenge before South Africa’s International Airlines Council over ownership and control regulations, which currently limit foreign investment in South African carriers in 25%. Airlink and Lift Airlines (GE, Johannesburg OR Tambo) raised questions in Pretoria about FlySafair’s foreign ownership limit.
A decision on the matter may be delayed due to a backlog at domestic and international licensing bodies in Pretoria, which are at loggerheads with the Department of Transport, which has stopped payments to councilors as it reviews their allowances, affecting capacity of regulatory bodies to process applications, Independent Online reported. Both boards were reconstituted in March 2022 following a regulatory hiatus in overseeing the granting or revocation of traffic rights for South African airlines.
