Galileo was the first of the major GDSs to establish itself in South Africa in the early 1990s. Current Travelport CEO Gordon Wilson ran the operation there for a spell later in that decade. Since SAA migrated its internal reservations systems to Amadeus five years ago it made less sense for it to be the distributor for a rival GDS company's product. In any case the big GDSs prefer to own their distributors outright these days. Following on its recent success in Japan this shows that whatever problems it may have in other areas there is definitely still life in Travelport's core GDS business.