Air traffic chaos exposes system failures

In aviation, safety is governed by the hallowed principle of redundancy. This means ensuring that an aircraft has at least one – and sometimes more – back-ups for its systems.

Therefore, if something should fail, the plane will, in theory at least, be able to get back on the ground.

That is why it is astounding to learn that the body charged with regulating our airspace and the air traffic within it – Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS) – appears to have been caught flat-footed on one of the busiest flight periods of the year over the past weekend, simply because someone booked off sick.

There was, we are reliably informed, no one rostered as a stand-by replacement. Nor were other staffers willing to stand in.

There should have been a backup plan here, and to now try and blame the chaos of delayed flights on thunderstorms is, frankly, a transparent attempt to cover up ATNS managerial incompetence.

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Aviation expert Sean Mendis summed it up gloomily: “ATNS is unfit for purpose, with the South African Civil Aviation Authority sometimes teetering on the same precipice,” he said.

“They have lost skilled controllers to Australia and the Middle East, hollowing out institutional resilience. They can barely cope in perfect conditions and collapse in suboptimal ones.”

This latest chaos came as ATNS paid more than R130 million in executive performance bonuses over the past two financial years, during a period in which more than 200 national instrument flight procedures were suspended and statements show that roughly three-quarters of ATNS’ pre-tax profit in each of those years was consumed by bonus payments.

This whole situation is a disaster waiting to happen – and even as we say that, we pray we are wrong.

Air traffic control is a vital aviation system and it cannot be anything less than excellent.

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