The unions representing the flight attendants and other employees of South Africa’s struggling state airline, South African Airways (SAA), said that they would launch “the mother of all strikes” at SAA starting on Friday, after the airline refused to give into their salary demands and started consultations about cutting more than 900 staff.

The strike would continue indefinitely and the airline must take them seriously, the unions, who collectively represent 3,000 of SAA’s 5,000 workers, said.

South African Airways (SAA) in return said on today that a proposed strike by labor unions would endanger the future of the airline, threaten jobs and could just spell the end of SAA.

The looming shutdown forced South African Airways to announce in a late-night statement on Wednesday that it “has cancelled nearly all its domestic, regional and international flights scheduled for Friday, Nov 15 and Saturday, Nov 16”.

“The airline’s key objective is to minimize the impact of disruptions for its customers,” it said.