The Collapse of 1Time

 Hello Aviators

Welcome back to another blog, today our blog will be taking a different direction, instead of talking about an aircraft and its different specifications, we will be talking about an airline, you probably know which airline I am talking about from the picture above, we will be discussing the South African carrier named 1Time. 

1Time MD80

Background of 1TIME

The idea to create a new airline in South Africa came about in 2003 and in the year 2004, 1Time airline officially launched as one of South Africa's first Low-Cost Carriers (L.C.C), the name 1Time comes from the South African slang language meaning "for real". The Airline's offices were in Isando Kempton Park and OR Tambo International airport served as the base of the airline's operations. 1Time was launched to provide South Africans with easy and affordable travel within the country, hence it was launched as an L.C.C rather than a traditional Legacy carrier such as South African Airways. 1Time flew to several destinations including George, East London, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Johannesburg. 1Time operated a fleet of MD80 aircraft as well as DC-9 aircraft, the combination of aircraft amounted to 11 aircraft before the airline stopped operations. At the airline's peak, it competed with airlines such as Kulula.com. 

1Time MD80

What Went Wrong?

Now, I am sure you are all wondering what caused 1Time to fail, well there are actually quite a few reasons including mismanagement and a lack of financial accountability. The airline industry is already tough with constantly fluctuating fuel prices and passenger demand, so airlines must constantly be run as tight operations where every penny is carefully monitored and correctly utilized. Reports found that 1Time had more than triple the amount of staff needed and that the airline was also paying a maintenance provider which was their subsidiary more money than was needed in order to keep that maintenance provider afloat as it was also experiencing financial difficulty, all these things contributed to an increased overhead cost. 1Time made use of planes that were cheap to lease because they were old but the problem is that old planes will typically require more fuel than a modern plane of the same size. Old planes will also require expensive and frequent maintenance. Members of the board would receive annual bonuses while the airline was experiencing financial difficulty even though some of these board members made poor financial and operations decisions due to incompetence.

1Time DC-9

In August 2012, 1Time entered into business rescue in an attempt to save the airline, at the time the airline had R320 million in short-term debt. An analyst had drawn up a plan of action that could assist 1Time to return to profitability within 6 months, but unfortunately, the board ignored this plan, some of the board members had accepted that 1Time was going to go under and were focusing on creating a new airline called Skywise which ironically also failed but within a shorter time span. On the 2nd of November 2012 at 2:30pm, 1Time went into liquidation, all aircraft that were in the sky turned around and returned to the airline's base at OR Tambo International Airport, any other planes that were scheduled to fly were grounded leaving thousands of passengers stranded, this was the end of 1Time.

1Time MD80

Unfortunately, nothing was done to revive the airline and as of today some of the airline's aircraft are stored at airports such as Upington airport, and the other aircraft were returned to the lessors or scrapped. It is very sad when an airline collapses because a number of people lose their jobs and economic growth levels decrease, what is also sad is that many more airlines have come and gone in South Africa since 1Time collapsed, including carriers such as Sky Wise. Hopefully, current airlines do not end up suffering the same fate as 1Time, we just hope that they learn from 1Time's mistakes. That is all for today Aviators, till the next one, STAY FLYING HIGH.

**DISCLAIMER. ALL IMAGES USED IN THE BLOG DO NOT BELONG TO ME, ALL IMAGES USED HAVE BEEN FOUND ON PLANESPOTTERS.NET AS WELL AS JETPHOTOS.COM. ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS NAMES HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE IMAGES SO AS TO NOT CLAIM THE IMAGES AS MY OWN**