Is SAA really operating at a profit? Aviation analyst Guy Leitch questions its 2025 report

Earlier this year, the South African Airways (SAA) Group reported a R155-million net profit for its 2024-25 financial year, and a R30-million profit for the airline SAA.

It said the fiscal year to end-March 2025 marked the second year a profit had been recorded since SAA exited business rescue in April 2021.

However, aviation analyst Guy Leitch maintains that this is far from true.

RELATED: SAA's priority to reposition itself as world-class airline BEFORE finding strategic partner, says CEO Lamola

Delving deeper into SAA's 2025 annual report shows it is in fact not operating profitably but hiding a R1-billion-a-year operating loss, according to Leitch.

"In other words, it cannot compete, is not sustainable and will require a bailout, if it has not already had one", the former SA Flyer Magazine editor writes in an opinion piece for Daily Maverick.

Talking to Stephen Grootes, he explains how coming upon jarring statements in the report led to deeper examination which led to the discovery of "extraordinary inconsistencies". (The Money Show will follow up with a right of reply to SAA)

"The more we dug, the more we found there were actually four different possible profit numbers, of which most notably it was probably a R155 billion loss or thereabouts because operating costs significantly exceeded revenue."

Credibility is also not helped by basic blunders in the report like mixing up millions and billions, according to Leitch.

However, more seriously, there is apparenlty a basic failing in understanding airline performance in that "it states key metrics that are measured in kilometres, in rands", he goes on.

"The millions/billions thing could have been more like a punctuation mistake, in that what should have been either a comma or a space in terms of separating numbers was actually a decimal... but those are relatively minor issues in the overall scheme of things. The real nitty gritty is what the actual financials are hiding and what they show."

The aviation analyst says that he did ask SAA for comment, but was fobbed off. However, just before this interview the airline's new head of corporate media relations contacted him, saying there were inconsistencies in his report, Leitch adds.

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the interview with Leitch, and click here to read his detailed report