Critical issues in South Africa’s air traffic control

South Africa’s Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS) organisation boasts that it is responsible for overseeing 15% of the world’s airspace.

That, though, makes it even more worrying that the critical controls and systems over our skies are in such a questionable state.

In recent months there have been repeated delays to scheduled air services at airports countrywide because certain automated systems have become unserviceable, or unusable, because they have not been made compliant with global standards.

This has resulted in aircraft having to use time- and fuel-consuming procedures, especially when it comes to landings. In some cases, flights have had to be diverted or cancelled because of bad weather at destination airports, which has cost airlines millions of rands.

It is beyond worrying that South African airlines feel they cannot speak on the record about this parlous state of affairs, for fear of being victimised by ATNS by way of greater delays, or extended time in holding patterns.

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Those who control air traffic around the world are held to the highest standards – obviously, because hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake every day – and when you let vindictiveness raise its head, safety goes out of the door.

Users of our airspace have every right to raise issues – global air safety culture rests on the foundation of transparency and learning from mistakes.

This culture of defensiveness has already taken root in many government departments or state-owned enterprises, so it’s not surprising that it exists in ATNS.

However, that attitude, coupled with the very real deficiencies in our air traffic systems and procedures, means we run the risk of being blacklisted as a destination by foreign airlines or governments.

And that would be devastating to our national image, to say nothing of our tourism industry.

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