File picture. Boeing 737 Max airplanes sit parked at the company's production facility on November 18, 2020 in Renton, Washington. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today cleared the Max for flight after 20 months of grounding. The 737 Max has been grounded worldwide since March 2019 after two deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Picture: David Ryder/Getty Images/AFP
Predictably, the issues about whether South Africa’s aviation regulator is being properly run in line with international regulations – and whether there could be a developing safety issue in the sector – has degenerated into racial acrimony.
Last week, African Pilot magazine editor Athol Franz claimed that poor accident investigations, bribery and incompetence have sent the South African Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa) into a tailspin.
This is despite the fact that Sacaa director Poppy Khoza earns a staggering R5.7 million, including performance bonuses. Franz said that, in 2017, an audit found that the accident investigation unit shared offices with Sacaa in Midrand and its investigators were paid by the regulator.
That is illegal in terms of international standards.
In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is separate from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which oversees aircraft accident investigations. This separation of powers has seen the NTSB level criticism of the FAA on a number of occasions in relation to aviation safety.
Franz’s criticisms have been met by some in the local aviation sector with allegations that he and other critics of Sacaa are driven by racism and a refusal to accept the transformation taking place.
Independent aviation expert Phuthego Mojapele claimed that the “white males” who used to dominate the industry had found change “hard to swallow”.
“It is sour grapes, nothing else. The white minority have not accepted the fact that black people are taking over the aviation space. When we take over the space, we are narrowing the dominance of white people. This is unfair criticism,” Mojapele said.
The lives of people – passengers and plane crew – in the air is too important to allow race to cloud an impartial judgment.
International standards are not determined by “transformation” either.
We urge the authorities to sort out what is clearly a bad situation for all concerned.
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