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lowcost Velvet Sky, starting route to Polokwane Airport, which was revamped at a cost of R30 million for the World Cup but so far is used only by Airlink with small aiircraft carrying 30 passengers.PHOTO SUPPLIED<\/p>\n
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Velvet Sky chief executive Dhevan Pillay says the low-cost airline will continue to fly in spite of its R29-million debt to fuel supplier BP. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as we\u2019re concerned, we\u2019re looking forward to celebrating our first birthday in March. We\u2019ve been thrown a few curveballs over the last year, but we\u2019ve bounced back,\u201d Pillay said yesterday. <\/p>\n
The airline has until next Monday to respond to BP\u2019s application to provisionally liquidate it, which Pillay said would be opposed. <\/p>\n
Today\u2019s flights were about 90 percent full. <\/p>\n
King Shaka International Airport spokesman Colin Naidoo confirmed the airline was fully operational as of Saturday, after all flights were cancelled on Thursday, leaving 600 passengers on 15 flights scrambling. <\/p>\n
Velvet Sky operations chief Gary Webb said then that cancellations were because of a \u201cdispute\u201d with SAA Technical, which maintains the airlines\u2019 planes. <\/p>\n
In the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday, BP\u2019s counsel, Gerrie Roberts, SC, said Velvet Sky had breached its undertaking to pay arrears by February 17 and had not kept up to date with current payments for aviation fuel. <\/p>\n
\u201cVelvet Sky has often delayed paying what was due to BP,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Farouk Moosa, SC, for Velvet Sky, said negotiations were taking place and he denied allegations that the airline\u2019s pilots had not been paid. <\/p>\n
\u201cPayments to staff are up to date,\u201d Moosa said. <\/p>\n
Judge Johann Ploos van Amstel said while liquidation applications were usually urgent, he did not envisage problems should Velvet Sky be given until March 5 to respond. <\/p>\n
He adjourned the matter to March 7. <\/p>\n
Difficulties <\/p>\n
BP\u2019s attorney, Thulani Mciwa, said in court papers that in view of Velvet Sky\u2019s obvious credit difficulties, it would not be able to buy aviation fuel from any major SA fuel companies. <\/p>\n
He had heard that Velvet Sky was living from hand to mouth by using credit cards to buy small amounts of fuel from other sources. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mciwa said that the court should ensure that no creditors were unfairly preferred. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
inlsa lowcost Velvet Sky, starting route to Polokwane Airport, which was revamped at a cost of R30 million for the World Cup but so far is used only by Airlink with small aiircraft carrying 30 passengers.PHOTO SUPPLIED Velvet Sky chief executive Dhevan Pillay says the low-cost airline will continue to fly in spite of its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-8381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}