South African Airways, with its domestic market share under pressure after its two domestic rivals forged international alliances, is fighting back with allegations of dirty tricks against Comair and heavy discounting on domestic sectors in the peak period.
In a move that revives memories of the acrimonious battle between British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in the UK, SAA is alleging that Comair has obtained sensitive commerical information by hacking into the flag carrrier's computer system. Ironically, the allegations were made on the day that British Airways' franchise agreement with Comair came into operation - Virgin has also ensured a presence in the South African market through its link with Sun Air.
SAA claims that a Comair employee broke into its CRS using an SAA employee's code, and extracted confiden- tial information about the airline's passengers and bookings. Among the information obtained, claims SAA, were details of certain individual passengers and their histories, priority waiting lists, seat availablity on London-bound flights, and details of overbooking in all classes. The claim has been denied by Comair, which says most of the information was available to all users of SAA's Saafari reservation system. The airline has reported the matter to the South African police as well as to the Harmful Business Practices Committee.
On the same day that SAA made its allegations against Comair, it also announced 60 per cent discounts on 12,000 seats over the December and January holiday season. Comair responded two days later by reducing fares to 15 per cent below those of 1991, when it first started to fly the Johannesburg-Cape Town trunk route. SAA denies it has started a price war, saying that the 12,000 seats were discounted because they weren't going to be sold at the previous fare level.
The campaign was so successful, says SAA, that it made an extra 6,600 seats available at the lower price, which were also snapped up. Such is the apparent success of the discounting drive that the carrier may be tempted to extend the offer to the domestic sectors of international flights completing the final legs from Johannesburg to Durban and Cape Town.
But the South African Revenue Services put a stop to any hope of that in mid-October. Two weeks before the price cutting started, Sars stopped SAA from picking up domestic passengers on international flights because of an increase in smuggling. Domestic passengers were found to be taking contraband from international passengers disembarking at Johannesburg. SAA said it would lose around R75 million (US$16 million) a year if the ruling was enforced and offered to fly customs officers to India and Australia to study procedures there and buy Sars more scanning equipment. Both offers were rejected.
Roger Makings
Source: Airline Business
