Power outage at Cape Town Airport exposes deep flaws

Although Cape Town International Airport has won multiple awards, it still needs to up its game, says an aviation expert in the wake of a massive power outage at the airport on Sunday night, during which back-up systems failed to kick in and considerable damage was caused to electrical circuits.

Airports should never be affected

Aviation expert Phuthego Mojapele said load shedding has always been an issue in the country, but airports should never be affected because of contingency plans.

“Cape Town Airport has always been the weakest as far as the facilities are concerned.”

He cited an incident last year that caused hydraulic fuel to spill and affected the runway, adding: ”One would expect that they would mitigate the risks of the disruptions. When the one power supply on a particular instrument on the airport fails, you should have a system in place that would allow what we call a swift changeover, which would then allow the disruption to be minimum.”

ACSA shoud have provided better explanation

Mojapele said it was unacceptable that Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) should not have been able to give a better explanation than a two-line press release yesterday.

In an e-mail to The Citizen ACSA said: “Technicians and specialists are working on fully restoring the network and all systems are expected to be back to normal tomorrow.”

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However, Mojapele said: “If you don’t have adequate facilities that can maintain and keep that runway active as possible, then you clearly do not have the interest of making sure that you are mitigating all the risks that the airport needs to avoid.

“They need to double their efforts to make sure that there is no disruption. Why didn’t they make sure that they a double layer of every little thing because they have a single runway that is active.

“ACSA needs to step up its game. It can’t be business as usual that there’s these issues and it’s just blaming the power outage.”

He said the effect of this is that airlines lose a substantial amount of money.

“Each and every plane that takes off from any destination, there’s financial projections that have been calculated on that trip alone.”

Losses need to be recovered by increasing ticket prices

This means the losses will need to be recovered by increasing flight ticket prices.

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“They are not judged on whether airlines are effective. They have the advantage of being a tourist attraction and their effectiveness is on a small scale, which is something that can be achieved, but the more airlines that are there, that becomes more difficult.

“The determining factors are considered by tour operators because it’s a good destination, they make money from the tours so they will always go to the travel indabas where they will be judged based on that.”

He added that there were talks of expanding the airport but the domestic departures area is a disaster that’s about to explode. “The award is based on the tour operators. What we see on the ground is not a true reflection of what’s happening.”

‘Very little communication’

After a short stay celebrating their love in the Mother City, Minenhle Khumalo and his partner were caught by the outage and received “very little communication”, which “did not allow us to make necessary plans to cater to our needs. They did not offer us food and water,” Khumalo said.

“A lot of people slept on the benches. The staff were trapped there with us because they had to take control of the situation and eventually we left at 4am.”