SA Airways was barred from a hasty return to the skies by the SA Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) over the weekend, scuppering a plan for the national carrier to retrieve and deliver SA’s first batch of Covid-19 vaccines.
The airline has been mothballed since September, with limited operations over the nine months before that. In terms of civil aviation rules aircraft must be serviced and maintained during downtime and the crew, particularly pilots, kept flight ready by flying or by doing simulator training.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has expressed a wish that Covid-19 vaccines be delivered by the national carrier. SAA had readied itself for this, expecting that a flight would depart on Saturday. The aircraft, an Airbus A340-600 was fuelled up and parked on the runway. But clearance was provided by SACAA on Tuesday, too late for the vaccine run.
In a statement on Thursday evening the department of public enterprises said the SAA flight had not been grounded, but that permission to fly had come too late.
The SACAA said in a statement on Thursday that it had been approached by SAA with a request to grant exemption, relating to a flight to Brussels. But, it said, its main concern was that SAA crew had not had sufficient flying time. It requested SAA to provide details on the risk mitigation measures put in place to address this.
“The concern that SACAA had was in relation to the recency of the flight deck crew. It is important to note that recency is a vital safety requirement for pilots as outlined in the Civil Aviation Regulations,” it said.
Mitigation measures have since been put in place and SAA was granted an exemption to fly on Tuesday, it said.
In its statement the authority also noted that the maintenance requirements for aircraft that are out of service had been fulfilled by SAA during the down period.
“Any operator who is not conducting regular flights, or their aircraft are not in regular service/operation for one reason or another, is expected to conduct the required maintenance on the aircraft, which may include preservation and return to service maintenance. To this end, SAA Technical remained operational to perform these maintenance tasks on SAA aircraft,” it said.
Though SAA had voluntarily ceased operations a while back it had surrendered its Air Operator Certificate (AOC) to the SACAA, which remains valid, said the authority.
As it is likely that SAA may deliver vaccines in the future there has been debate in aviation circles over whether the use of an Airbus, which is not a cargo plane and is expensive to fly, is the most appropriate aircraft to use.
One industry insider described the exercise as expensive waste, as the aircraft would fly empty to Brussels at a cost of about R700,000 in fuel alone. This view was tempered by another aviation analyst who said that other large airline companies had recently converted the A340-600 to cargo planes. Whether the couriering of vaccines, which was a small amount of cargo, made sense or not, depended upon what else was exported at the same time.
SAA is not expected to make a full return to the skies until it has secured a strategic equity partner, which is essential to funding the restart of operations. In the interim, say the business rescue practitioners, all planes are available for charter.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.