Any further delay in finalising the sale of SA Express may cause "irreparable regulatory challenges", according to Fly SAX, a consortium of former employees trying to save the airline.
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Last year s preferred bidder to buy SA Express says it has now submitted a revised offer.
SA Express is in provisional liquidation.
The next court date to determine if it should go into liquidation has been moved to July.
Fly SAX, which was accepted as preferred bidder for state-owned regional airline SA Express last year, says it has submitted a revised offer to the airline s provisional liquidators.
In April, the provisional liquidators had said that Fly SAX had breached the terms and conditions of the sales process as no funds were forthcoming .
Fly SAX is an equity crowdsourcing proposal by a group backed by some employees. The purchase price for the Fly SAX bid was R50 million, payable in the form of a bank guarantee to be provided to the joint liquidators. Some movable assets sold by the provisional liquidators had reduced this amount in the meantime.
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The airline is set to be recapitalised by a new anchor investor. 00:01
The public offering will reopen once the airline resumes operations. Image: Tod Burns
Fly SAX, a worker owned entity, has suspended its bid to raise seed funding to buy cash-strapped regional airline SA Express through crowdfunding platform Uprise.Africa.
The seed funding will instead be raised by an anchor investor who will recapitalise SA Express and take full ownership of the airline to get it off the ground, according to the groupâs spokesperson Thabsile Sikakane.
âCrowdfunding is not completely off the table. Itâs just that for now in order to recapitalise the business, we needed immediate cash which the [new] anchor investor is more than willing to put up,â says Sikakane.
Gallo Images/Grant Duncan-Smith
SA Express was placed under provisional liquidation in April 2020 after a failed business rescue process.
Plans to consolidate the airline with SAA became difficult due to both state-owned airlines running into trouble, Parliament hears.
The oversight model for SOEs such as SA Express needs to be looked at, the DPE told Parliament.
In 2016, the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) put together a business model to outline how to consolidate South African Airways (SAA) and regional airline SA Express (SAX), according to Nonny Mashika, acting deputy director general for aviation at the DPE.
However, by 2018, both these state-owned airlines were experiencing severe problems.