The SAA flight that collected the country’s second batch of Covid-19 vaccines from Brussels last month experienced an “extraordinarily dangerous” event on take-off, which was reported to the SA Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa) only three weeks later.
The Airbus A340-600, which was originally barred from take-off by Sacaa for reasons including that the SAA pilots did not have the recent flight hours required, eventually flew to Brussels on February 24, after receiving an unprecedented number of exemptions from the authority.
But on take-off it has since been reported to have experienced an “alpha floor event”, which is when the Airbus envelope protection system kicks in to override the pilots to prevent the plane from stalling on take-off.
Aviation analyst Guy Leitch described it as “extraordinarily dangerous”. The event has been widely discussed on online
aviation forum FlyAfrica.
Such an event must be reported by the crew to the airline, which must in turn report it to Sacaa. An automated alert is also sent to manufacturer Airbus and the engine maker.
Sacaa confirmed on Monday the incident was reported to it and the accident and incident investigation division on the evening of March 17. The flight took place on February 24.
“On receipt of the report, an investigation team was established to probe the incident as well as the reason for the delayed notification. The regulations stipulate that aviation accidents must be reported within 24 hours, serious incidents within 48 hours, and incidents within 72 hours,” Sacaa spokesperson Kabelo Ledwaba said on Monday.
SAA’s return to the skies — particularly as part of a symbolic exercise to transport vaccines, which could have come by normal air cargo flights operated by several European carriers — has been much criticised for the cost and the corners cut.
Leitch said he believes Sacaa granted an unprecedented number of exemptions to enable the flight to take off. Sacaa said on Monday it wanted to refute the impression that it has given SAA “special treatment”.
SAA has been mothballed since September with limited operations in the nine months before that. In terms of civil aviation rules, aircraft must be serviced and maintained during downtime and the crew kept flight ready. Its return to the skies has been delayed until October, according to the company’s website.
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