SA Express systems at fault — regulator

But airline counters paperwork caused grounding of fleet of 24

THE South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) defended yesterday its shock grounding of all SA Express flights at the weekend, saying there had been a systemic “deficiency”.

But the airline — the first in SA to have its entire fleet grounded — claimed the suspension was about paperwork and, by Sunday, it had resumed flights.

The CAA said although SA Express was not the first airline to be penalised for safety-related matters, it had been suspended because the deficiencies affected its entire operation.

In the past, South African Airways (SAA), Comair, SA Airlink and failed airline Nationwide had been investigated by the CAA due to safety concerns.

However, in those cases, the deficiencies had been related to a single aircraft, said CAA executive for aviation-safety operations, Simon Segwabe.

“So, the penalties differ, depending on the deficiencies and the area in which they are found,” he said.

After suspending SA Express flights on Friday evening, meetings were held with the regulator, documents exchanged and flights were allowed to resume.

Yesterday, SA Express spokeswoman Refilwe Masemola said the airline had been grounded because of differences in incident-reporting procedures. She said all incidents on any flight had to be reported to the Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) by pilots.

However, when it came to reporting to CAA, SA Express policy was to report incidents only of a “certain level”.

Mr Segwabe said the airline had been investigated on April 19 and 20 after a malfunctioning of one of its aircraft’s computers while it was in the air. The investigation had found deficiencies in the airline’s safety-monitoring system, said Mr Segwabe.

SA Express was given until last Friday to respond to the CAA’s findings. However, the response had not tackled the deficiencies and concerns raised by the authority adequately, Mr Segwabe said. SA Express was then suspended.

Ms Masemola said that there was a misalignment between the recording of flight documents and the incidents reported — which resulted in a misunderstanding.

“Following our consultations with the CAA, we were in a better position to understand exactly what documents they required and in what manner we should submit,” she said.

Transport economist and aviation expert Joachim Vermooten said yesterday it was “very concerning” that systemrelated failures had been detected at SA Express as opposed to a failure with a single aircraft, engine or part, as might usually be the case.

“It indicates that there must be a managerial or oversight concern that the CAA has. It is very strange that there is a systemrelated block and then the airline is operational again,” Mr Vermooten said.

At the weekend, the CAA had meetings with SA Express and the airline provided documents detailing plans on how it would deal with the deficiencies highlighted by the CAA. The last of these documents had been provided between 2pm and 3pm on Sunday, said Mr Segwabe.

The next step would be for SA Express to measure the processes it had put in place for safety-monitoring, he said.

Loss-making SA Express is a feeder to cash-strapped SAA.

In February, the SA Express board gave management the goahead to approach the government for funding options to

There must be a managerial concern the CAA has

acquire new aircraft to replace its ageing fleet.

Briefing Parliament’s portfolio committee for public enterprises SA Express CEO Inati Ntshanga said the aged aircraft increased ground time required for maintenance and costs, which affected the airline’s performance and reliability. There were also negative perceptions and frustration caused by flight delays, he said.

SA Express is seeking to replace its fleet of 24 aircraft over the next 10 years. The airline flies to 29 destinations and has 37,287 flights a year, according to last year’s annual report.

But Ms Masemola said there was no correlation between the airline’s need for a new fleet and being grounded at the weekend. “Airlines typically replace their fleets for new-generation aircraft because it makes for business and operational efficiency — which is the same in our case,” she said. However, the airline is undercapitalised and has a weak balance sheet characterised by high levels of debt. Last year it made a R132m loss on turnover of R2.6bn. The year before, it made a loss of R10m on turnover of R2.56bn.

Mr Vermooten said SA Express had the monopoly on feeder routes for SAA and the grounding of the airline at the weekend had shown that more competition was needed even on these “smaller routes”.