With financial, regulatory and labour union approval now in the bag, Comair is moving forward with the implementation of its business rescue plan. Travel News understands that this will see a number of former Comair executives returning to its team together with the implementation of a B-BBEE ownership strategy for the airline.
Glenn Orsmond
“I am confident that Comair flights will be back in the air by December,” said the airline’s former ceo, Glenn Orsmond¸ in a media statement released by Comair this week. While Glenn was quoted in the release as a “representative of the Comair Rescue Consortium”, Travel News understands that he has been heading the team of former Comair executives that successfully bid for the reinvestment of the airline.
Glenn is a chartered accountant and has held a number of high-profile roles in South African aviation. He was a founder of domestic LCC, 1Time, which he headed as ceo for eight years before resigning in 2011 – a year before the airline went bust. He was also a founder of LCC Skywise, which flew for less than a year before being grounded at the end of 2015. He also previously served as financial director of Sun Air, ceo of Jetworx Aircraft Maintenance and cfo of Star Air Cargo.
Glenn has previous experience working at Comair and was financial director from 1995 to 2003. He returned to the airline in mid-2019 as joint ceo, a role shared with Wrenelle Stander. Five months later, Glenn was re-assigned as ceo of Comair’s Airline Division in what group chairperson, Lindsay Ralphs, said would “ensure better performance and efficiency in a very competitive airline industry”. At the time, Wrenelle immediately took over as Comair’s group ceo. Three months later, in March this year, news broke that Glenn had been retrenched. At the time, Wrenelle was quoted saying that Comair was “rightsizing the group and refreshing its executive team in an orderly and carefully considered process”.
Iain Meaker
Iain Meaker held various executive management roles within the group during his 13-year tenure at the company. Most recently, according to LinkedIn, Iain was appointed divisional ceo Tourism and Hospitality for Comair before being retrenched shortly afterwards. Travel News understands that Iain’s roles included growing Comair’s non-airline revenue, which included management of kulula holidays, the Discovery Vitality key account, the Slow Lounges, MTBeds and Flight Plus.
Iain has extensive travel industry experience, as managing member of Airport Shuttle Services during the early 90s before the company was bought out by Welcome Tourism Services in 1997. This was followed by a spell as Welcome’s manager of domestic and scheduled tours and then as md of Absolute Tours between 2002 and 2006.
Other former Comair executives reported to be rejoining the group’s new executive management team include Brian Kitchin, former executive manager sales, marketing and distribution; former finance director, Kirsten King; and former HR executive, Reshika Singh.
Commitment to B-BBEE structure
While the Competition Commission has granted approval for SA BidCo (the former executive management investor team) to purchase Comair, there are conditions attached to this.
Not only must the new investors commit to make offers of employment for a period of three years to staff who have been retrenched as a result of the proposed transaction when new jobs become available, but the merged entity must also commit to allocate a proportion of the shares to a B-BBEE structure post-merger.
“The Competition Commission received concerns regarding the merger’s impact on public interest. The concerns related to the effect of the merger on employment and on the promotion of a greater spread of ownership in the aviation sector,” said the Competition Commission.
“The B-BBEE structure will include an Employee Share Ownership Programme and will be consistent with Statement 100 of the Codes of Good Practice on Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment in terms of the B-BBEE Act. The Commission is of the view that the proposed B-BBEE initiative is a positive public-interest outcome and will promote the public-interest objectives in the Competition Act. The Commission found that the conditions tendered by the merging parties are sufficient to public interest concerns. The merging parties have agreed to the conditions,” it added.
A spokesperson for Comair’s BRPs said that as third parties were involved in the processes of meeting the regulatory and other conditions, they cannot presently put definitive timelines to these. Additionally, he was able to tell Travel News that kulula holidays is expected to resume operations in December 2020.
