Here’s why former Comair maintenance provider’s licence was suspended

Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International’s approval to operate as a maintenance organisation was suspended on Wednesday. Coincidentally, a statement from the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) lists similar reasons cited for Comair’s grounding last week.

Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International (LTMI) maintained part of Comair’s fleet until Tuesday. The company is a subsidiary of Lufthansa Technik and operates its maintenance business for customers outside Germany.

LTMI received a red-letter from SACAA on Wednesday. The aviation regulator said in its statement: “During the safety oversight visit LTMI’s quality control management system (QC) and safety management systems (SMS) were subjected to a review to establish legislative compliance related to reporting, analysis and follow-up of occurrences, and corrective action plans to prevent recurrence.”

Last week Kulula and British Airways (BA) were grounded for five days.

ALSO READ: Organisation that maintains Comair’s fleet, Lufthansa Technik, suspended by SACAA

SACAA said in its statement: “SACAA found that the aircraft maintenance organisation had both a quality management system and safety management system in place, however both were not implemented as per the civil aviation regulations and the requisite manuals.”

Comair flights experienced several safety related incidents prior to its grounding and last Sunday, after resuming operations, a BA flight experienced landing gear challenges on final approach into Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth).  

ALSO READ: We’re fine, says Comair

LTMI was given until Wednesday night to rectify several findings made by the regulator prior to its suspension.

Comair chief executive Glen Orsmond anticipated this earlier this week when the group announced its pre-emptive move to SAA Technical as sole maintenance provider on Tuesday. In a statement he said: “Our priority at the moment is to restore a full, reliable flight schedule for our customers to ensure they can book and fly with confidence, which is why, in these extraordinary circumstances, we acted as soon as we were informed that the suspension was a possibility.”

Linden Birns, co-founder of BHK Crisis Communications and an aviation expert, said: “The Comair and LTMI saga is cryptic and opaque communication raises the question whether the SACAA is acting whimsically and inconsistently. It’s important to understand what the SACAA’s concerns are, but levels of communication have done nothing to restore trust in the regulator which is already dealing with its own reputational challenges.”  

Birns added: “Passengers, who fund much of the SACAA through the passenger safety tax charged on every ticket, really want to know if they will get from A to B in one piece. For the industry the level of transparency and detail is critical.”

South Africans fund the SACAA with R86.75 on domestic flights, R180.57 on regional flights and with R238.07 on international flights.

According to the SACAA, a level 1 finding poses an immediate risk to users of civil aviation services and such findings must be closed immediately.  In its statement the authority said it found four instances of this.

“The SACAA shared the preliminary results of the audit on Sunday with Lufthansa’s accountability manager and his team and gave the operator 24 hours to make representations. The SACAA reviewed the evidence and corrective action plans submitted by the operator until Monday 21 March 2022.  The evidence was found to be satisfactory in relation to two of the level 1 findings. This means that two other level 1 findings could not be closed within the stipulated time,” the statement read. 

“It is for this reason that the SACAA handed a 24-hour precautionary suspension of the privileges of the AMO (Aircraft Maintenance Organisation) with effect from Monday night. The operator is required to submit further evidence to close the gaps identified by the regulator within this period failing which the regulator will indefinitely suspend the approval of the AMO until such findings are sufficiently closed.”

LTMI said to The Citizen: “SACAA temporarily suspended the approval for Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International (LTMI) in South Africa. LTMI now has 24 hours to resolve two open topics that were identified during last week’s audit and could not yet be remedied. Safety is the top priority for the entire Lufthansa Technik Group. LTMI is therefore in permanent exchange with the authorities and has set up a special quality management team to remedy the identified deficiencies sustainably and as quickly as possible.”