Cape Town – South African Airways (SAA) has revised its budgeted loss forecast for 2016/17 to R3.5bn from an earlier estimate of R1.7bn, documents sent to Parliamentarians on Friday reveal.

In a question sent to the SAA board from the standing committee on finance, which has oversight of the state-owned airline, the committee assumed that SAA had reduced its operating losses for the year under review.

It asked: “How sustainable is this reduction should the external economic environment become unfavourable?”