Mayday! Serial SA flight delays expose systemic air traffic failures that threaten aviation safety

Control tower at OR Thambo airport on May 2, 2013, in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Nelius Rademan)

By Ray Mahlaka

30 Nov 2024

Thousands of flights have been serially delayed or cancelled in SA in 2024. Consumers have blamed airlines for the mess. Behind the scenes, a crisis is unfolding at Air Traffic & Navigation Services.

For Michele*, it was supposed to be a routine and stress-free FlySafair flight from Johannesburg to George in the Western Cape in October. A two-hour flight, such as this is uncomplicated, apart from a bumpy ride here and there caused by turbulence, especially during wet weather.

https://youtu.be/19SisVjihx0

After all, Michele thought to herself, it’s spring and it normally rains during the season, especially in Johannesburg.

She felt sure that the pilots were well equipped for these common weather conditions and that it would be a smooth flight. She was dead wrong.

What ensued was a long flight that was rerouted to Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport in Gqeberha instead of the original destination of George Airport. The rerouted flight was bumpy and long, and at one stage the pilots contemplated an emergency landing.

“Thank God for skilled and experienced FlySafair pilots. The plane successfully landed at Gqeberha,” Michele, who did not want to be named for professional reasons, told Daily Maverick.

She had to rent a vehicle to return home to Mossel Bay (incurring additional costs) as flights were no longer destined for George but instead returned to Johannesburg.

Air Traffic & Navigation Services (ATNS), a state-owned enterprise (SOE) established in 1993 that is responsible for directing traffic in South Africa’s skies, blamed adverse weather conditions for the flight chaos, but there was another major reason that was beyond FlySafair’s control.

The reason, according to several aviation sources, is that George Airport is no longer an alternative landing destination for Cape Town because it lacks critical air traffic control staff and navigation systems. This poses safety concerns for planes departing and landing as it puts everyone on board at risk.

There have been similar incidents caused by staff capacity issues and failures of traffic navigation systems at busy airports including King Phalo, OR Tambo, King Shaka and Cape Town, and three other people have detailed their experiences of serially delayed or cancelled flights to Daily Maverick.

Lending credence to their experiences are numbers in the aviation industry. From 19 July to 19 October, just one airline, Airlink, had 3,892 flights delayed; 77 of its flights had to be cancelled and 12 had to divert. The cumulative delay time was 91,075 minutes or 63 days. These numbers swell when including those of airlines such as SAA, Lift, FlySafair and CemAir.

Bad weather is blamed for the flight chaos, but there is a shortage of critical air traffic control staff. (Photo: Jocelyn Adamson)

Blame laid at ATNS’s door

For this mess, several aviation industry players have laid the blame squarely on ATNS-controlled planes and flight schedules during every phase, from take-off to landing.

ATNS provides air traffic and navigation services to nine major airports operated by Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), another SOE, as well as airlines. Unlike other parastatals, ATNS does not receive taxpayer-funded bailouts and it mainly generates money from air traffic tariffs that it charges airlines.

When ATNS is not operating properly, domestic airlines and their flights do not operate properly and are subject to flight safety issues. And over the past decade, ATNS hasn’t been operating well.

It has suffered a loss of skills, mainly qualified air traffic controllers, radar controllers and instrument flight procedure designers (responsible for facilitating safe and efficient flight operations, especially during bad weather).

Underscoring this is that the ATNS headcount for workers involved in air traffic navigation services has been reduced from more than 900 in 2012 to 646 in 2023, according to its annual reports. This is while air travel demand among consumers has increased by an annual growth rate of 4.5%, making the smooth functioning of ATNS more important than ever.

The air traffic control industry is fiercely competitive and countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Australia and the UK are targeting skilled professionals from South Africa, offering them attractive and compelling remuneration and benefits packages. Others have left ATNS for low-morale reasons – being unhappy with their career paths and the lack of opportunities available.

An aviation industry insider told Daily Maverick that ATNS had informed the aviation industry on 27 November that it was losing another 10 air traffic controllers.

Busy airports, including OR Tambo International and Cape Town International, need ATNS staff to be increased by at least 17% to perform optimally and reduce flight disruptions.

Control tower at OR Tambo International Airport on 2 May 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo: Nelius Rademan / Gallo Images)

‘Rookie’ errors

The consequence of staff turnover and skills shortages at ATNS is that it cannot now comply with basic and important flight safety requirements and standards.

One of ATNS’s important roles, as stipulated in its annual reports and on its website, is designing hundreds of instrument flight procedures at airports that must be regularly updated and submitted to the South African Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa), an aviation regulator, for approval. Instrument flight procedures are a set of instructions or guidelines that pilots use to navigate and control an aircraft, especially in situations where visibility is limited, such as during poor weather, at night or in controlled airspace.

These procedures often include steps for take-off, landing and manoeuvring based on readings from instruments such as airspeed indicators and navigation systems.

Without ATNS instrument flight procedures, pilots would have a much more difficult – and potentially dangerous – time maintaining control of the aircraft in conditions where they cannot see outside, such as in fog, clouds or bad weather.

Without credible instrument flight procedures, pilots cannot follow precise routes that ensure they stay on course, which then results in flight diversions (flying longer routes) and delays.

Aviation industry players have argued that the lack of skills, especially those involved in designing instrument flight procedures, at ATNS came to a head on 19 July.

At the time, ATNS was forced to withdraw about 326 instrument flight procedures after failing to file paperwork to the aviation regulator for mandatory regular review. This resulted in hundreds of flight procedures being suspended across airports.

“This is a rookie error, especially for an entity such as ATNS, which has operated for three decades. It should know the compliance rules by now. ATNS is under-resourced,” said the aviation insider.

International best practices in the aviation industry, as recommended by the International Air Transport Association, require ATNS to review instrument flight procedures every five years.

However, the SOE, in some instances, has not conducted reviews for up to 12 years. This has resulted in a backlog of instrument flight procedures awaiting approval. ATNS has not acknowledged that it is facing a crisis or admitted that flight safety standards in South Africa have been compromised. It has, however, repeatedly blamed weather conditions and capacity issues of airlines and airports for flight delays and cancellations, instead of reflecting on its shortcomings.

Daily Maverick sent a list of questions to ATNS, asking whether its capacity issues create flight safety concerns, and how it plans to remedy staff turnover problems and outstanding instrument flight procedures.

ATNS failed to respond to Daily Maverick despite two deadline extensions that were offered.

In previously issued media statements, ATNS said that it has hired five external contractors to help it draw up flight instrument procedures and that these contractors will support its two full-time specialists who are responsible for this function.

ATNS has also hired five trainees (undergoing on-the-job training) who should be ready to join the two full-time specialists by March 2025.

It was also “on track” to submit all urgent flight instrument procedures for approval by Sacaa and for operational use by the end of November.

ATNS is likely to miss this deadline and there are talks of a new mid-December deadline because several submitted flight instrument procedures were rejected by Sacaa because of poor-quality work and were sent back for amendments.

ATNS has been reluctant to share information about how many flight instrument procedures it plans to submit to Sacaa and which ones it will prioritise.

The local aviation industry believes that ATNS will prioritise a small handful of flight instrument procedures for key airports, especially those that will be busy during the festive season, including OR Tambo International, Cape Town International, George and King Phalo airports, to avoid more flight delays and cancellations.

Beyond the festive season, ATNS will still have a backlog of flight instrument procedures for approval, which are not likely to be cleared by the end of 2025.

In addition to the old instrument flight procedures pending approval, ATNS has others coming up for renewal in 2025, adding to the backlog. Privately owned airlines are now considering volunteering their skills to ATNS and even contributing money to help it clear the backlog.

Broader impact on industries

Beyond the inconvenience of flight delays and cancellations for customers, the chaos at ATNS has broader economic consequences. ATNS problems can harm the financial situation of Acsa.

Acsa generates money by, among other means, charging a range of tariffs and levies to airport users, including airline landing and parking fees at its nine airports. Acsa is an outlier in the SOE universe, as it doesn’t rely on constant taxpayer-funded bailouts for survival, is self-funded and profitable, and pays dividends to the government.

Flight disruptions and throttled traffic flows at airports, as a result of the problems at ATNS, are likely to affect Acsa’s ability to maintain slot schedules at airports and allocate aircraft parking bays and boarding gates – all threatening its financial situation and sustainability.

Acsa acknowledged to Daily Maverick that flight disruptions would contribute to “decreased revenue from landing fees and retail sales, while also increasing operational costs for the airports”.

Other players in the aviation industry value chain were more blunt about the impact of ATNS-related problems.

Since it began operations in October 2014, FlySafair has captured 60% of the domestic aviation market and has mopped up flight capacity left open by the collapse of at least 11 domestic airlines. Kirby Gordon, FlySafair’s chief marketing officer, told Daily Maverick that the airline has been “impacted most severely” by ATNS problems at the airports in George and East London.

In 2021 and 2022, FlySafair’s percentages of flight delays that resulted from ATNS problems were 14% and 13%, respectively. This climbed to 19% in 2023 and year to date in 2024, it’s 24%. So far in 2024, FlySafair has had to cancel more than 30 flights.

Despite flight delays and cancellations, Gordon said FlySafair’s on-time flight performance record is 94.52%, which is still very high.

FlySafair has also been affected by diversions to other airports because of landing problems, resulting in longer flight routes that guzzle fuel. Planes often have to fly around in circles waiting to land at an airport where the instrument procedure has been withdrawn. Gordon estimated that FlySafair has wasted R3-million a month this year on fuel for longer routings and holding patterns because of ATNS constraints.

FlySafair and other airlines cannot claim damages from ATNS and must still pay the SOE its tariffs. Adding insult to injury is that ATNS wants to increase its tariffs for the next five years despite its services being so unreliable.

CemAir CEO Miles van der Molen said flight delays are a daily occurrence, with OR Tambo International Airport being “hard-hit”. “It has become a huge issue,” said Van der Molen, adding that CemAir encountered many flight disruptions on 20 November.

ATNS problems have the potential to undermine other sectors of the economy, including the courier industry, farming (farmers exporting perishables), e-commerce and healthcare (pathology labs, pharmaceutical suppliers and blood banks), which all rely on the airlines and enter into agreements to piggyback on their flights to transport their goods to parts of the country. Flight disruptions also delay the arrival of goods.

The good news is that couriers canvassed by Daily Maverick - including FedEx, The Courier Guy and others - say they have not yet experienced any impact from flight delays or cancellations.

If the air travel industry is unreliable and ATNS’s problems persist, couriers are likely to rely more heavily on road transport, which has a big cost implication. DM

*Not her real name

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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Blame laid at ATNS’s door

‘Rookie’ errors

Broader impact on industries