Safety remains priority for Civil Aviation Authority

The light aircraft industry has experienced a worrying spike in fatal crashes over the past year after a 50% drop in fatalities over the past four years, South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) director Poppy Khoza disclosed this week in its first briefing in years.

“Pilot error” is a phrase no aviator wants attached to their CV and two words no member of the public wants to see attached to an airline.

And for more than 30 years, this has been the case for large-scale commercial aviation operations.

“The cumulative number of fatalities is less than when compared to the previous year, which was 30 at the end of the financial year. To date, we have recorded 21 fatalities, which is still much lower than the 41 witnessed during the 2013-14 financial year,” said Khoza.

“But we always maintain that one life lost is one too many.”

If you have ever been glued to television watching documentaries of how investigators scratch through the wreckages of horror plane crashes which claim the lives of everyone on board, this is the job of SACAA.

It produces reports and makes recommendations where necessary.

The most recent visible example of this – and its authority in the civil aviation space – is SACAA’s grounding of CemAir.

Inspectors found unqualified people performing maintenance on some of its fleet.

SACAA subsequently lifted CemAir’s maintenance organisation suspension. However, its fleet remains grounded until declared airworthy by the authority.

Another example of SACAA’s authority is the High Court in Johannesburg’s order to the Gupta family to hand over their jet, failing which SACAA must permanently ground the aircraft worldwide by cancelling its registration. This has yet to happen.

Primarily, however, the organisation’s focus is safety and it is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

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