Dogfights in the skies over SA
Is the CAA, which regulates airlines, guilty of double standards? It deals high-handedly with local airlines, even though its own aircraft crashed two years ago
● Before 2018 it was almost unheard of for the SA Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to ground an airline, and it is hard to find examples of this happening elsewhere in the world. Yet in the past four years, under director Poppy Khoza, the CAA has grounded airlines six times.
Three years ago it grounded CemAir and the decision was reversed by the civil aviation appeal committee, which found the grounding to be wrong.
This time there are problems with the recent grounding of Comair. Aviation expert Joachim Vermooten says its “precautionary suspension” implies that the CAA did not have evidence of possible “imminent danger” concerning the airline. With Comair able to resume flights after just four days, the grounding suggests that it was nothing more than a paperwork problem.
It also raises the question of whether CAA bureaucrats
understand how vulnerable high-capital, thin-margin businesses airlines are, particularly after Covid.
The CAA’s standard response is that its decisions are non-negotiable when there are questions about safety. Yet it’s never that simple.
Concerns that the CAA favours state airlines arose with CemAir’s 2018 grounding. It appeared to be an attempt to protect the struggling stateowned SA Express, which was grounded earlier that year (and has been in provisional liquidation since 2020).
More evidence of seeming double standards emerged from the damning findings of the Ethiopian investigation into the crash of the CAA’s Cessna Citation jet at George two years ago. The inquiry found that the jet was not airworthy and the crew not properly licensed. None of those shortcomings applied to Comair — or any other airline the CAA has acted against.
The CAA also granted 13
safety exemptions to SAA to operate the vaccine flight to Brussels when the airline’s Airbus came within a whisker of ending in a fireball following an alleged miscalculation in take-off weight. The aircraft went on to break the speed and noise rules at Brussels airport.
What was most striking about the CAA grounding of Comair was the timing, which may have been selected to cause maximum damage. When the CAA grounded CemAir previously, in 2018, it was at the start of the December holidays, and other groundings happened immediately before a long weekend. The latest Comair grounding came a day before the Cape Town Cycle Tour, one of the busiest weekends of the year for air travel.
The 67-year-old Comair carries about 40% of SA’s domestic passengers and employs 1,200 skilled people.
Its grounding meant the loss of revenue as well as reputational damage, and may endanger its licensing agreement with British Airways.
The airline is in business rescue and was delisted from the JSE, so for further capital and operational funding it relies on the depth of the pockets of its owners.
Another casualty of Comair’s grounding is Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International. It had its licence suspended despite having passed a CAA inspection in February. The action forced Comair to move to SAA Technical, which was on the ropes. Then, for four hours in March, soon after Comair had moved to SAA Technical, the CAA suspended SAA Technical’s licence.
The CAA, in response to questions from the FM about the recent grounding of Comair, says its inspection of the airline was done after BA and kulula aircraft were unable to land at their intended destinations. It “discovered that
the airline and its maintenance
organisations did not fully implement their safety management systems and quality assurance systems”, says a CAA spokesperson.
On the issue of inconvenience to passengers, the CAA says its mandate is safety and security, “while the responsibility of passenger convenience is that of the airline”.
Asked whether the CAA’s suspension of CemAir in December 2018 was done to protect SA Express, the spokesperson avoided a direct answer, saying the question was “illogical”. The CAA says airlines can lodge an appeal against a grounding or challenge it in the courts.
On the suspension of Lufthansa Technik’s licence after the suspended maintenance service had passed a CAA inspection in February, the authority says the passing of an inspection “doesn’t mean that if there are issues a month later the [CAA] will not take action”.
“When the regulator learns of any challenges with an operator, [it] can pitch up, announced or unannounced, to conduct an inspection,” the CAA spokesperson says. “The latest audit [of Lufthansa Technik] was an oversight safety audit, based on specific incidents affecting the aircraft of an airline operator whose fleet is maintained by Lufthansa [Technik]. This was evidently an in-depth audit to understand the root cause of a series of incidents affecting the fleet of Comair, which was maintained by the [approved maintenance organisation].”
An inquiry found that the CAA jet was not airworthy and the crew not properly licensed