South African Airways has been flying with a government promise behind it since August. The mini-budget tabled on Wednesday revealed that the state gave the airline a R1 billion guarantee that month, to keep its day-to-day operations funded while jet fuel prices squeezed it.
A guarantee is not a cheque. Treasury director-general Duncan Pieterse told journalists before the mini-budget that the R1 billion is not an allocation: SAA borrows, and government promises to repay its lenders, up to that amount, only if the airline defaults. As long as SAA keeps paying, no money leaves Treasury.
It sits beside about R223 million in guarantees SAA already had, linked to tickets sold but not yet flown and to letters of credit, the bank undertakings airlines use to pay suppliers.
What jet fuel did to SAA
The squeeze is easy to measure. The International Air Transport Association puts the global average jet fuel price at as much as $192.44 a barrel by 16 October, against less than $100 at the start of the year, and African prices have gone as high as $201.09.
Other airlines passed the cost on. FlySafair, the country's most popular domestic airline, added a fuel surcharge that at one point put nearly R2,000 on a return flight between Cape Town and Johannesburg. SAA cut back its routes within Africa instead, and its executives said they would talk to lenders about funding.
The mini-budget itself says the state's exposure to SAA grew during 2026 because of the fuel price shock. What happens next, it says, depends on whether the airline can absorb that pressure and meet its operating and financing needs "without additional government support".
Why Treasury wants a partner
Treasury's longer answer is to bring in someone else to share the airline. Pieterse said it is working with the Department of Transport to find a new strategic equity partner for SAA, an investor who buys a stake in it. Cabinet has already approved the search, after the Takatso Consortium deal fell through in 2024.
Pieterse said the partner matters "so that we can permanently mitigate against" a repeat of this kind of support. Until the transaction is designed and set up, he said, Treasury will not know whether it has to put in any money of its own.
For now SAA's safety net is a promise to its lenders, and the job in front of the airline is making sure nobody ever has to collect on it.
