Report on SAA plane stalling just after takeoff, will never be open to public

The South African Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa) says it will never publish its report on an incident in February in
which a South African Airways Airbus A340-600 went into a stall shortly after takeoff from OR Tambo international airport – and a crash was only averted by automatic software.

Mystery still surrounds what happened to flight SA4272 to Brussels on a vaccine run that saw both the departure and return flights clock incidents.

Sacaa is not talking about the incident on local soil and despite SAA interim chief executive Thomas Kgokolo’s commitment in August to release information about the events “soon”, the rebooted airline remains mum, too.

The incident was also not published on the Sacaa website where it lists other aviation incidents and accident investigations from this year.

Sacaa did not classify the nearstall as serious incident.

It said to The Citizen: “The SAA alpha floor [the name for the software intervention, which was automatically trigged] incident was not investigated under the Civil Aviation Regulations Part 12 or ICAO’s annex 13 standard.

“The Part 12 serious incidents and accidents are investigated by the aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Division (AIID) and hence all those are published on the website. The SAA Alpha Floor incident does not fall under the incidents investigated by AIID and therefore will not be published.”

ALSO READ: SAA hits turbulence a few days after relaunch

An aviation safety professional and former SAA pilot said the response means the incident was noted, but not considered serious.

“Likely because there were no passengers on the plane,” he said.

“But while the aircraft’s own safety systems prevented an accident, what is troubling was the chain of events that preceded it.”

While Sacaa lists reports on several incidents and aviation accidents on its website, also involving no paying passengers, fatalities or injuries, the SAA alpha floor event is curiously absent.

An alpha floor event happens when an aircraft stalls, or is about to stall, because of a load overweight and flap setting mismatch.

It could cause a crash and may have happened when the operating crew likely failed to complete a preflight check list that dealt with a known flight system glitch on the Airbus A340-600.

A source inside Sacaa said he was surprised no report was available on its website.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) requires a preliminary report published after an incident and a full report after a year.

In April, Sacaa also noted that SAA had broken the rules by not reporting the incident within stipulated timelines.
In addition, the body said “an investigation team was assembled by Sacaa to probe the incident and present a report”.

It added that at the time the investigation was conducted and a report was to be compiled “to outline the full findings and recommendations”.

The content of the report, outlining the investigation conducted and findings, will serve as a guide on the appropriate enforcement action to be considered.

ALSO READ: SAA board signs Mango’s death sentence – 709 jobs likely lost

Sacaa told The Citizen it will not publish the report.

“No, we will never issue this and other similar reports to the public. You can approach the operators directly if you so wish,” it said.

On 7 August, SAA confirmed receipt of the Sacaa report.

“In addition to SAA’s internal investigation, SAA received the report from the Sacaa investigation into the same alpha floor event.

“The report has made findings and recommendations. SAA is studying the report to determine how the recommendations can be implemented.”

Since then, SAA has gone quiet.

– news@citizen.co.za