Myeni’s fly-by wire antics put morale at SAA into free fall
Captains in charge, but chairwoman calls the shots
SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni’s vilification of its pilots has become a safety issue, says Captain John Harty, chairman of the SAA Pilots Association.
Myeni has called the pilots a “drain” on the airline and “an abyss”. She has belittled them in front of the entire staff of SAA.
Following these attacks, there have been incidents where cabin crew and ground staff have openly defied the authority of captains, and Harty believes this is no coincidence.
The association passed an unprecedented vote of no confidence in Myeni this week. Ten years ago, it passed a vote of no confidence in then CEO Khaya Ngqula, who was subsequently fired. But never in the almost 70year history of SAA have its pilots passed a vote of no confidence in the board or its chair.
Harty, 62, a senior pilot with 39 years’ experience at SAA and 21 000 flying hours behind him, says he wrote to Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene last month telling him that Myeni’s public statements and comments were becoming a safety concern because they were affecting the status of captains and undermining their on-board authority.
The authority of captains aboard their aircraft is enshrined in international aviation conventions, which are underwritten by South Africa.
“The authority of the captain is sacrosanct and we can’t have situations where it is challenged,” says Harty.
For ground and cabin staff to defy the captain of a plane is “as flagrant an abuse of aviation convention” as there can be, he says, and is potentially disastrous.
“They think they can act with impunity because the chairperson publicly slags off the pilots and undermines them in front of the staff.”
In May this year, Myeni addressed a meeting of the top 100 SAA managers where she lambasted the pilots for being overpaid and a drain on the airline. She then invited a shop steward from the cabin crew union to address the meeting, and he continued to slag off the pilots in front of all the managers.
In September, when asked by a parliamentary subcommittee to explain SAA’s poor financial position, she said the “No 1 problem” was the pilots, who were a drain on the airline — but, she said, she had a strategy to deal with them.
“We took great exception to those comments,” says Harty. He wrote an angry letter to the press saying that SAA’s real No 1 problem was Myeni and her incompetent board, and that even if the pilots were not paid a cent the airline would still be a financial disaster.
Her response was to send an internal memo to all staff condemning the association for its baseless accusations, and insulted it again.
In October, she called a general meeting in the SAA auditorium for all staff.
“She used that opportunity to attack the pilots again,” says Harty. He says there were questions coming from the floor that clearly seemed primed by her. Every time she answered them, she switched to Zulu.
“And every time she switched to isiZulu to attack the pilots, the people were clapping and ululating and banging their feet and cheering, so I don’t think her remarks were very pro-pilots.”
The association requested a recording, which was refused.
After the meeting, there were two cases of pilots being told by ground crew — a ground engineer and a cabin attendant — that they “don’t take instructions from captains”.
What about allegations of racism made by the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union?
“I don’t think our pilots are racist,” says Harty. But “sometimes they feel they’re goaded into responses which do end up in racial retorts”.
He says an incident is being dealt with now where a pilot was accosted by a cabin crew member before he signed on for his flight and, “finger in the face, told: ‘You pilots are draining the company.’ ”
He was “really upset by this” and in his pre-flight briefing with the cabin crew said that Myeni, a teacher who had no qualifications to run an airline, was draining it, not the pilots. “He actually went a little bit over the top, but he didn’t make any racial comments at all,” says Harty.
He says he hopes the no-confidence vote will jolt the government into action.
“From our side, we don’t have much sway. But we’re an important stakeholder in the airline and we like to think that if we have a vote of no confidence, the shareholder [the government] will sit up and take notice.”
The vote of no confidence came after “numerous” letters had been sent to the shareholder’s representative, Nene, expressing their concerns.
Nene’s response was that they should go through the proper channels, namely Myeni — which is what they had been trying to do, without success.
Eventually, Myeni, he believes under pressure from Nene, set up a meeting “at very short notice” on September 23.
As Harty and a senior colleague walked in, she took their cellphones.
The company secretary recorded the meeting, but in spite of her promises at the time and their frequent requests subsequently it was never made available.
Three weeks after the meeting, they received a copy of the minutes, which Harty says bear little relation to what actually transpired.
“They are complete hogwash. According to the minutes we agreed no media statements, we agreed all sorts of things, which is absolute garbage.
“We really regret giving her our cellphones.”
Myeni told them she had no confidence in many of her senior board members, who have now been suspended, gone on special leave or resigned. “It was a tirade, we couldn’t get a word in.”
When asked what her strategy for dealing with the pilots was, she said the general manager of flight operations was dealing with it. He was at the meeting, but said nothing.
The main bone of contention between them, apart from the fact that they believe she is destroying the airline, is that she wants to renegotiate the pilots’ salaries, which she says are exorbitant.
Harty acknowledges that the pilots are paid well, but no more so than their counterparts elsewhere. He says their salaries, between R1-million and R3-million a year, are benchmarked against eight other international airlines, and were agreed to by management.
She and Satawu have also suggested that the pilots are impeding transformation.
Harty says it is “completely disingenuous” to blame the association for the fact that only 130 out of 760 pilots are not white men. He says they have “no say” over the matter. There is one representative from the association on the selection board, but he has no vote.
The pilots’ union supports transformation “fully” at the entry level. But pilots join SAA for life, so unless the airline expands, vacancies do not often occur.
In fact, the airline is shrinking. It has 50 fewer pilots now than 15 years ago. He believes this is not entirely unrelated to the incompetence of its management over the years.
It used to take 17 years to become a captain, now — because there are fewer posts — it takes 22 years.
He says SAA pilots are still among the best and safest in the world, and he believes they have a right to expect members of the SAA board, not least the chairwoman, to be as well qualified for their jobs as the pilots are for theirs.
He points to Ethiopian Airlines, which is outperforming every other airline on the continent, as proof that state airlines can be profitable if they are run by people with appropriate experience and qualifications.
To have any chance, SAA needs to be recapitalised, but this would be a waste of money unless “a proper board”, without Myeni, is appointed.
He finds it “extremely alarming” that someone with her lack of aviation experience seems to have SAA in the palm of her hand.
Her explanation for wanting to renegotiate the SAA Airbus lease deal to involve a local player is “proof she does not know what she is doing, or that she does, but does not want to disclose it for untold reasons”. He finds both possibilities “worrying”.
“We really are hoping the minister is going to be brave enough not to appoint her on the new board.”
We really regret giving her our cellphones. It was a tirade, we couldn’t get a word in They think they can act with impunity because the chairperson slags off the pilots