Dear Valued Customer,

It is a great honour to introduce myself to you, I am André Viljoen.

Today, 1 April 2001, is the start of my 5-year term as President and Chief Executive Officer of South African Airways. Over the past three years, I have been wearing various hats within the organisation, heading up Finance, IT, Commercial Services and Domestic Sales, and very recently also Voyager.

My experience in the airline industry spans over 20 years of which the greater part has been in turning around poor performing entities such as SAA. My most important task was to ensure that those entities moved into profitability and would remain so in the future. Due to my unique portfolio and turn-around responsibilities, the well-respected publication ‘Airlines International’ recently nominated me as one of five ‘Super’ Chief Financial Officers in the world.

With the express purpose of urgently focusing on improving and providing you with superior customer service, I am restructuring the organisation and our Leadership Team. Customer service is one of the key focus areas in the coming weeks and months and will be touching every facet in this airline, leaving no stone unturned.

In the past weeks, I have personally been involved in vastly improving the service levels in our Voyager Service Centres and I am positive that you will see some more significant changes in the very near future. We have also substantially revamped our on-board product, which will be ‘road-showed’ to you in early May and will be implemented on our long-haul fleet shortly thereafter.

It is in this vein, that I invite you to talk to me directly to let me know where we can improve our service to you. Your valuable input would be highly appreciated. Please send me a fax on (011) 978-3553, or e-mail me on [email protected] or contact my Executive Office on (011) 978-2606.

It is my fervent wish that you will give all the men and women of South African Airways the opportunity to demonstrate to you that as South Africans we are poised to take this airline to even greater heights.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you for flying South African Airways, and I am positive that with your feedback and our initiatives to vastly improve service levels, we will exceed your expectations.

Thank you for your assistance in helping us to fly the South African Dream.

André

——-