South African Airways To Be Reorganized Into Three Business Units

This is not unlike how Qantas is run - international, domestic and freight, Loyalty, Jetstar etc all have separate CEOs.

Does 'the guy' not have a name??

Or is the only airline CE you know the name of Ben (Smith) of AF-KLM??

Alexander could be wrong but pretty sure Qantas only has one CEO for the whole airline. Jetstar is obviously considered a separate fully owned entity.

Like you alluded to, it's probably an intermediate step towards shedding the loss-generating longhaul portion of the airline.

It's scary to even think about their long haul operations and how much of a loss they generate... Having 16 A340s is a bit of a joke for such an unprofitable airline with (surely) unprofitable long haul routes to JFK/IAD/GRU/PER/HKG...

I fly 5/6 times from USA to Joburg & SAA is almost always the highest priced for business class

To make things more confusing there are subsidiaries like SA Air Link and SA Express which fly regional and domestic.

The only way to shrink SAA to profitability is to shrink it to nothing.

SAA has been on a downhill run for 15 years. Ground employees in JNB are the laziest I've ever seen. It's riddled with corruption like the SA government. Let it die!!!

"SAA has historically had issues with corruption, and decentralizing things like this seems like it could bring back some of that."

Yup. Smaller BUs make malfeasance more difficult to ferret out.

"I fly 5/6 times from USA to Joburg & SAA is almost always the highest priced for business class"

With the worst hard product and worst soft product.

SAA is a mess.

I only fly BA within South and southern Africa if the only alternative is SAA. BA costs more, but is so much better than SAA.

I don’t know what bankruptcy laws are like in South Africa but this seems like a play to protect the regional and domestic wings of the airline (which are likely profitable) from the inevitable bankruptcy of the long-haul wing. By creating this level of separateness between the operations they can prevent the regional/domestic parts from being dragged into the bankruptcy of SAA’s long haul flights.

Unrelated. British Airways is selling roundtrip first class from JNB to LHR for $2,700 in April & May...

The questions was "What do you think — does it make sense to split SAA up into three business units, or no?"

Yes it does. Your arguments are flawed and show your youth in the 'Corporate World'. You cannot have a Business Unit with practices that go against the corporation. It is illogical. A Busiess Unit (BU) can have practices / procedures very different from the other BUs, but all are in line and in synch with the vision from the corporation.

It makes it easier to pinpoint shortfalls from a global perspective and it empowers BUs to set their own goals, requirements and even working conditions.

A Business Unit cannot hide its shortcomings by laying blame outside its own walls; every genemal manager is accountable for his/her performance. Makes it easier to promote or sack employees based on results.

Now, will this work at SAA? It can't hurt, given the context.

1. Privatisation has been explicitly and strongly ruled out, all units remain 100% state-owned
2. SA Airline is not a subsidiary of SAA, it is a separate privately owned company which operates flights exclusively under SA codes
3. A lot of detail is not clear yet, such as whether there'll be separate CEOs or just senior management teams

I've used SAA a lot domestic and long haul, no complaints. Service is friendly on board and decent food. I hope they turn it around. Unfortunately some people will always try and put the national airline down for political reasons.