Dear Editor
Multiple commercial airports across South Africa have faced Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) failures in recent weeks, resulting in cancellations of hundreds of commercial flights and thousands of stranded passengers, which is an unacceptable failure of the Department of Transport.
The DA calls on Transport Minister Barbara Creecy to take this seriously, to put ATNS on terms, and to table a plan for the urgent restoration of uninterrupted service of Air Traffic Navigation at our major commercial airports.
The commercial airport in East London has been particularly badly affected, and the DA sympathises deeply with the affected passengers who have been hard hit, who have had their travel plans cancelled, been hugely inconvenienced and many of whom have lost large amounts of money in missed travel and missed connections.
Images over recent months of passengers stranded at airports across our country are an unacceptable failure.
The root cause is that Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) has repeatedly failed to maintain its safety and navigation equipment and systems, and this has not been rectified by the Department. They are currently not calibrating the Instrument Landing Systems properly for many airports, making their approaches unsafe and often impossible.
There are serious staffing issues with air traffic controllers, too which is reducing control areas for each air traffic operation, forcing aircraft to rely on their own Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems, instead of having the oversight of air traffic controllers.
Functional ATNS is essential for ensuring that pilots can operate aircraft safely, in line with global standards.
Some pilots, due to ATNS failures, have had to manually operate several critical systems on approach, landing and take-off – and while our pilots ought to be fully skilled in this, it is much more difficult in overcast, cloudy and especially rainy weather.
The unacceptable shutdown of many commercial airports in recent weeks and months has disrupted airlines, aviation services companies, flight schools, cargo operations and the businesses that feed into these.
The DA will not accept that this risk continues, as it threatens our tourism industry, as we approach peak season.
The shutdown of local airports like King Phalo, in East London, the Mthatha Airport, George Airport, and the Kimberly Airport, risks putting these cities at the bottom of travellers’ wish lists and will devastate their tourism industries. Without reliable airports, many travellers will simply choose other destinations.
If planes cannot take off or land as we head to peak holiday travel season, and if we cannot welcome international tourists at many airports, it will embarrass our nation.
Regards
Dr Chris Hunsinger MP
DA Spokesperson on Transport
Truth
Italy: You have two cows. The northern one produces all the milk. The southern one sleeps all day.
Pink Stream
Van der Merwe goes to Paris to watch the Boks take on the Brits at the world cup.
Whilst in Paris, he walks around, gaping and staring at everything – so much so that he walks smack bang into a fire hydrant which hits him so hard on the family jewels that he has to be rushed to hospital where the doctors tell him they have to remove his testicles.
Van goes berserk, he bites and snarls at every one and he won\’t let anybody within 10 metres of him. Eventually they find a South African doctor in the hospital and get him to talk to Van.
He walks up to Van and tells him \”Hey Van, die ouens moet jou knaters uithaal.\”
Van replies \”O, okay, ek dog die bliksems wil my test tickets vat.\”