SA’s air traffic services suspends flight approaches to five airports due to inclement weather

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s Air Traffic Navigation Service (ATNS) has suspended procedures for all instrument-navigation flight approaches to five airports.

Poor visibility due to inclement weather has affected flights to the George, Kimberley, Mthatha, Polokwane and Richards Bay airports.

The latest flight disruptions follow a cyber glitch that affected Microsoft cloud services updates on Friday, affecting banks, some airlines, telecoms and retail stores.

Meanwhile, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) has assured passengers facing major glitches at FlySafair check-in counters at OR Tambo International Airport, adding that this had nothing to do with the global outage.

Despite this affecting some airports internationally, all six airports controlled by ACSA in the country remain unaffected.

On Saturday, passengers using FlySafair experienced challenges when they tried to check in, with ACSA clarifying that it was not linked to Friday’s global outage.

"We are not affected by the issue, so it is not related to this. We have released a statement regarding this,” said ACSA spokesperson Busie Gcali.

AIRLINK APOLOGISES TO CUSTOMERS AFFECTED BY SUSPENSION

Airlink has apologised to customers affected by an indefinite suspension of its flights to the George, Kimberley, Mthatha, Polokwane and Richards Bay airports.

Airlink CEO Rodger Foster said the review process for the navigation approaches is unfortunately taking longer than anticipated.

"The affected airports and our services to them are vital to business, trade, and tourism in those cities. It is with this in mind that Airlink has offered to assist in securing the services of international experts in airspace and approach procedure design, so it can expedite the review and reinstatement or implementation of new fully compliant procedures."