Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula held a media briefing on October 24 at OR Tambo International Airport in which he addressed the state of the aviation industry in South Africa following the grounding incident that affected three airlines on October 22.
Some SAA, Comair and Mango Airlines aircraft were grounded following a notice issued by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) related to ‘irregular findings’ picked up during an audit of South African Airways Technical (SAAT). SACAA said the aircraft would not be able to fly again until the necessary corrective actions had been taken.
Twenty-five SAA aircraft, 14 from Comair and seven Mango aircraft were affected.
Fikile said the SACAA audit of SAAT resulted in five findings relating to non-compliances with the Civil Aviation Regulations. SACAA sampled two aircraft belonging to Mango and Comair. Even though SACAA accepted the Corrective Action Plan submitted by SAAT, two findings that may have affected the entire fleet of the three airlines remained a cause of concern for SACAA. The other three findings were administration-related, Fikile said.
These two findings related to unqualified personnel releasing or signing off maintenance work and, secondly, maintenance checks on flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that had not been done correctly.
The airlines co-operated with SACAA and submitted evidence which the authority spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday evaluating.
Of the 46 aircraft that were affected, 40 are now back in service.
Fikile reiterated that this grounding incident was in fact routine and that SACAA was proactive in dealing with it.
He said the airports across the country were maintaining acceptable standards of on-time performance after the drop on Wednesday, October 23.
