What is wrong with South Africa’s Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA)?

The South African aviation industry is regulated by the SACAA where not one person has any experience in the real world of flight training, flight operations at the Part 135 and Part 127 level. If the regulator had even a small amount of experience, it has failed to make the grade retreating to a steady and powerful transformation stance. The SACCA has no understanding in the fundamental differences between airline operations and General Aviation. As the industry we must earn our Rands, whilst the regulator burns our income.

Some pertinent examples:

• The late issuing, after much begging, to release an aircraft operating certificate. All paperwork required was delivered in time and the late issue normally leads to a financial loss, without any recourse. All the excuses just make the individual feel like someone begging for a crumb from the mighty SACAA table.

• When we take the SACAA to task, it simply uses legal ways to stretch the issue and it does this with our money and a ‘could not care’ attitude, even if it means one’s demise.

• Therefore, every delaying tactic of finding a missing comma or something else to blame is not moving the issue forward. This is pathetic and ruining the industry.

• If you have a friend at the regulator, you have a slightly better chance, but the SACAA is simply not capable due to lack of knowledge and skills, or personnel strength, to serve the community, which is seen as corrupt by it. However, it is the SACAA which is suspect.

• Deliberate holding back on accreditation or application due to personal and perceived racial, issues. “I will show you.”

• I once asked Johan Niemand of the SACAA for the reason he did not want me to open a flying school in the country. He said that he was understaffed and as such could not agree to give the go-ahead. I pointed out “that it our business to create businesses and the SACAA’s job is to support the application. It does not have any legal reason to prevent it.” He answered, “Okay, no problem, you can go ahead, but I will just slow the process down!”

• In numerous instances, the regulator moves the ‘goal posts’ to suit the mood of the day. Operators now must apply three months earlier, but then the issue of the licences or other important documentation is delayed by the SACAA for a host of inconceivable reasons.

• There is a growing ground swell that operators should issue summonses to the SACAA collectively as an industry, for not sticking to its own Standard Licensing Agreement, whilst deliberately ruining the aviation industry as a direct result. Each individual business in this loop of incompetent madness will personally be taken to book, as the industry is already ruined and at this stage there is little to lose.

• In many instances we are forced to use mailboxes that are not attended by anyone at the regulator. If perchance the mails are read, no replies are forthcoming so that any person within the staff of the regulator can appoint someone who can take the matter further.

• The SACAA makes rules that not only destroys aviation enthusiasm, but also sinks plans of creating prosperity, laws that the regulator does not understand and cannot oversee. You can only get a Drone licence if you are in some way special, or dare I say, bring something to the party such as a bribe or a perfect BBEEE certificate.

• Why is it taking weeks and months to obtain an ‘Authority to Fly’ or an ‘Air Worthiness’

• Certificate, when we already possess ‘A Release to Service’ certificate from our AMO?

• We really try our best to be the best, but if you are legal and properly functioning you have a problem, because most SACAA employees at the top structure, see aviation business as a criminal and easy low hanging fruit, not going after the illegal operators are there is absolutely nothing it can do about this. Please stop treating us as criminals and turning nasty when we clearly abstain from complying.

• The regulator’s inspectors have large ‘chips on their shoulders’ who know more about how to sink us than know what flying is all about.

• Why are all new laws attributed to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)? ICAO knows nothing about game operations, crop spraying, Light Sport Aircraft and many more in General Aviation. Crew Resource Management (CRM) for an airline crew is by no way helpful to a single operator working in the unattended world of real application of the variants of machines. However, non-sensical laws are pushed without thinking.

• The often-used excuse for any new SACAA ridiculous law is - “it came from the ICAO!”

• Stop thinking that it is the ‘chancers’ who are sick and tired of SACAA nonsense, bully tactics and preferential treatment! It is not - it is WE professionals! We can claim this descriptive word as we have the knowledge, the skills and aviation blood flowing in our veins.

I am sure someone will put more effort in and give timelines, but what takes three months with our SACAA would take most regulators in the world just one day. The insistent lack of digital knowledge and work procedures has opened the gap between South Africa and the remainder of the developed world. Big money to get outside service providers as internal is a serious risk in uncovering what happens under the table. There are many more issues I could raise and I sure could have been more precise and less emotional, but take note that our right to make a living is an emotional issue.

Name withheld for obvious reasons.

Dear Anonymous,

I clearly understand your frustration due to having to bow down to an increasingly dysfunctional SACAA, because almost every day I hear similar stories from all sectors of South Africa’s aviation industry. My personal experiences with some individuals within the SACAA have also shown me that all is not well at the regulator. When an organisation is so thoroughly dysfunctional then one needs to look at the management of that organisation and realise that you are correct in that there is very little aviation experience within the top echelons of the SACAA. I witnessed this first-hand at a press conference called at the regulator after the tragic loss of the SACAA’s Cessna Citation in January that took three lives. Perhaps now is the time to bring these matters to the attention of ICAO, so that the international body will investigate the blatant failure of South Africa’s aviation regulator.

Sincerely, Athol Franz