Flight safety warning in South Africa

A dire shortage of air traffic controllers and failures to review key flight instrument procedures have raised concerns about South Africa’s aviation safety and operational issues, which are affecting airline operating costs and the economy.

These issues were highlighted to MyBroadband in feedback from Plane Talking managing director and aviation expert Linden Birns.

Birns explained that a global shortage of qualified air traffic controllers, radar controllers, and instrument flight procedure designers had emerged in recent years.

This comes on the back of commercial air transport demand surging at a compounded annual growth rate of 4.5% over the last 20 years.

“This was made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic and the near total grounding of commercial flights,” Birns said.

“It led to many experienced people being lost to the industry either by way of retrenchments, early retirement, death or other attrition.”

Birns said the demand on a smaller talent pool had seen frequent recruitment drives by air navigation service providers in other parts of the world.

Countries like Australia and the United Arab Emirates have recruited many South African controllers with lucrative remuneration packages and benefits.

“The prospect of plying your skills and honing your expertise in some of the busiest air traffic zones is an attractive proposition for anyone wanting to develop their careers,” Birns said.

“It’s no different to young trauma doctors from Europe coming to South Africa to get exposure and experience treating the variety and volume of serious injuries that are dealt with by South African city hospitals on a typical weekend.”

Exacerbating the problem is the government’s budget cuts on defence spending.

“Depending on the skill and particular competency, it can take several years to recruit, train and qualify a controller,” Birns said.

“Historically, the South African Air Force (SAAF) was always a ‘nursery’ or feeder for commercial pilots and civilian air traffic controllers in South Africa.”

“The SAAF no longer operates as many aircraft and it has a curtailed budget of annual flying hours. “

“As a result, it no longer represents an attractive or viable pathway to a civilian career as an airline pilot or air traffic controller.”

Air traffic control in South Africa is the responsibility of the Air Traffic Navigation Service (ATNS), which falls under the Department of Transport.

Although ATNS had an internationally reputed training college that produced highly sought-after talent and received candidates from other countries, there was a clear output shortage, as can be seen in several recent developments.

Firstly, Johannesburg air traffic control has needed to implement flow control, which creates greater following distances between aircraft departing or on landing approach.

Birns explained that the purpose of this practice is to slow the tempo of takeoff and landings to avoid overwhelming fewer controllers.

“It also means aircraft standing in long queues — with their engines idling — waiting to take off or aircraft being placed in holding patterns before being allowed to continue their approach for landing,” Birns said.

Secondly, there have been several recent occasions where the Johannesburg Terminal Manoeuvring Area has been temporarily reclassified as Class G airspace.

“Class G means there is only a flight information service — typically to tell the pilots what the wind, weather and visibility conditions are and which runway is in use — and pilots are required to maintain their own separation,” he said.

“There is no air traffic control in Class G airspace. This has also occurred at Cape Town in the past couple of years.”

However, the problems have not been limited to a shortage of air traffic controllers.

ATNS has also failed to meet administrative deadlines for reviewing hundreds of critical instrument flight procedures countrywide.

That has increased the burden on air traffic control and made it impossible for planes to land at certain airports during inclement weather.

Massive operational and economic impacts

Birns explained that each flight instrument procedure must be reviewed on a rolling five-year basis to ensure it remains accurate, relevant and fit for purpose. 

“ATNS has not managed to keep up to date and in some instances, procedures have not been reviewed and maintained for up to 12 years,” Birns said.

“Instrument procedures enable the safe navigation and coordination of aircraft flying between and within busy airspace centres, regardless of the time of day and in all but the most severe weather conditions.”

Most recently, 300 instrument procedures that were all deemed perfectly safe had to be withdrawn after ATNS missed a deadline for paperwork on 19 July, resulting in the procedures being regarded non-compliant.

Birns said that disruptions caused by the ATNS’ administrative failure played havoc on airport ground operations scheduling.

Just one local airline experienced 3,900 flight delays, numerous diversions, and cancellations between 19 July and 9 October 2024. “The cumulative delay time was 63.25 days,” Birns said.

He explained this had a significant cost implication for airlines, including through contractual obligations to compensate customers and shippers for failure to transport.

“They are also legally obliged to pay statutory user fees to ATNS for every flight and for any additional use of its airspace and infrastructure if a flight is diverted or turned back to its point of departure,” Birns said.

That means that ATNS is essentially benefitting financially from its own failures.

In addition, aircraft must carry more expensive jet fuel in case of delayed departure or approach due to flow control and the unavailability of instrument procedures requiring diversions or go-arounds.

Birns said these issues had a serious knock-on effect on the economy as many services and sectors depended on reliable and predictable air transport connectivity, including:

• Tourism and hospitality establishments that receive cancelled accommodation bookings due to flight delays or cancellation
• Temperature-sensitive goods, such as pharmaceuticals and perishable foods that can spoil if not stored in temperature-controlled conditions
• E-commerce businesses and couriers that cannot guarantee deliveries or honour delivery deadlines
• Manufacturers of high-value electrical, telecoms and automotive components needed for urgent repairs cannot ship their goods on time
• The medical sector becoming vulnerable to delayed organ, blood, or pathological sample transports for emergency operations or laboratory diagnoses

No silver bullet — but options on the table

Birns said that there was no silver bullet to fixing these issues in the short term.

He said that ATNS was trying to move as fast as it could with what resources it had, while also trying to source additional hands from other air navigation service providers and consultancies around the world.

“It has also identified a handful of people who are in training, but it will be at least two to three years before they are suitably skilled and qualified,” Birns said.

Birns said although transport minister Barbara Creecy was consulting with ATNS and South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) executives over the issue, she also needed to engage with technocrats and aviation experts on instrument flight procedure reliance.

“The biggest help would be for the SACAA to provide guidance to ATNS on the information and format it wants to receive the approved applications,” Birns said.

“This would avoid a situation we are currently seeing where ATNS is submitting its applications to the SACAA, but many are being rejected and returned to ATNS for reworking.”

“The SACAA could do this without compromising its independence and integrity as the safety oversight body.”

“This would be in line with its legislated mandate which is to ‘control, promote, regulate, support, develop, enforce and continuously improve levels of safety and security throughout the civil aviation industry’.”

ATNS and SACAA did not respond to MyBroadband’s requests for comment by the time of publication.