According to Reuters, customers will be thrilled to hear that South African Airways (SAA) and Comair have begun returning grounded planes to service on Wednesday, 23 October 2019.
SAA grounds airplanes
The airlines both grounded their airplanes on Tuesday after safety regulators picked up on maintenance problems. At the time, SAA said it “may operate an amended flight schedule.”
Mbalula tries to calm the situation
To avoid confusion and further issues, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula gave an afternoon briefing on the problem. He revealed that there was no need to panic and that the disruption was likely to come to an end shortly.
OR Tambo, Lanseria, Cape Town International, King Shaka, and Port Elizabeth were all affected with cancellations or delays. Some of the affected planes had to “undertake compliance verification in line with the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) requirements.”
SAA and Comair flights back on schedule
A passenger service representative for Airports Company South Africa gave an update recently. The representative said today flights were flying from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport as per usual.
Comair also said it expected no disturbances on their flights on Wednesday.
Why were the planes grounded
On Tuesday, the Comair had eight of its domestic flights disrupted. SAA had 25 aircraft affected by the regulators’ safety audit.
The airline declined to comment on the matter. On Tuesday, SACAA revealed that it had found faults during an inspection at SAA Technical.
It then proceeded to issue a prohibition order until the faults were fixed. However, the authority declined to disclose the nature of the problems that led to the grounding.
How the airlines handled the grounding
In reaction, SAA’s maintenance unit offered SACAA a corrective plan which they accepted.The authority also welcomed the decision by “SAA and Comair to ‘self-ground’ some aircraft on Tuesday as a precautionary measure.”
SAA Technical is responsible for maintaining SAA aircrafts. They also maintain SAA’s subsidiary Mango Airlines and British Airways franchise partner Comair.
The latter also operates under the kulula.com brand. SAA was forced to cancel four domestic flights yesterday.
They remedied the situation by combining services and deploying bigger aircraft to accommodate its affected passengers. The company also sent out notices on its social media to alert passengers of alternate measures for those affected.
The state-owned flag carrier of South Africa hasn’t made an annual profit since 2011. So far, the company has been relying on the government to bail it out to allow it to operate.