Vessel carrying jet fuel arrives in Cape Town

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) has confirmed that the vessel carrying jet fuel has docked in Cape Town.

This follows a week-long delay due to high tides.

Mark Maclean, regional general manager at Cape Town International Airport, told Newzroom Afrika on Monday that once tests have been successfully run, the jet fuel will be pumped into the refinery.

“We are now working with the fuel suppliers to get it delivered to the airport in two days,” he said.

On Monday, ACSA said it had managed to increase the number of jet fuel reserves at Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) and was confident that flight movements would continue as per schedule.

This after a meeting between the airport management and airlines in which the they requested a reduction in uplift of fuel.

According to ACSA, this has allowed the airport to now have up to 4.5 days of fuel reserves.

“The airport’s management together with airlines have ensured that there is very little flight disruptions, and to date, only one airline has had to cancel their international flight. We would like to urge the travellers, especially those travelling internationally to arrive at least four hours prior to departure as this will assist in their facilitation,” said Acsa.

ALSO READ: How Cape Town International Airport’s jet fuel shortage hit airlines

Maclean said this was the first time for a while that the airport was experiencing jet fuel shortages.

“We had previously relied on production at refineries and one of the contributing factors to the situation is that some refineries have shut down and not producing jet fuel locally. Over the past two or three years, we’ve had a bigger reliance on imported jet product on vessels and its unfortunate that its happening now because we are expecting local refineries to restart production in the next two to three months and we hope this type of situation will not repeat itself,” he said.

Compiled by Vhahangwele Nemakonde