Expert describes OR Tambo flight delays as unacceptable

As holidaymakers return home, those flying to or from OR Tambo Airport should hope for good weather.

That's according to aviation expert Guy Leitch, who commented on long delays there on Sunday.

Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS), which has repeatedly come under fire for missing deadlines to submit revalidation paperwork to the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) for re-approval of flight procedures, blamed staff shortages and the weather for this latest delay.

"The staffing issues at this time of year are probably understandable in that there's been a massive shortage of staff for so long, and they agreed with the existing staff to double-up and do maximum overtime and so on," says Leitch. "The staff has been under maximum pressure.

"Weather isn't really a satisfactory excuse because this all goes back to the cancelled flight procedures, which were there to deal with incremental bad weather. And you can't just have a single thunderstorm moving over OR Tambo that disrupts the system so badly.

"Quite frankly, the situation remains unacceptable."

He adds that it's not just domestic commuters who have been affected. "It's actually more worrying where people connect to long-haul flights". This gives the country a bad name in terms of its ability to feed back to international routes.

So who is responsible?

"The situation goes back, clearly or most obviously, three or four years ago, when there was a massive staff upheaval and the CEO was replaced. The whole environment became toxic, and most of the best skills were then poached by the UAE, Emirates and Australia.

"That also goes to this massive failure, which continues for the approval of the instrument flight procedures, which meant that the whole system could not cope at the moment it happened."

Leitch says Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy, in response to the ATNS challenges, put a committee of eminent people together who've come up with recommendations. "I think the real culprit here is that those recommendations are not being properly implemented."

ATNS's latest statement says all air traffic control staffing shortages at OR Tambo have been resolved and operations have stabilised.

To listen to Leitch's full conversation, use the audio player below: