Crew ignored procedures to prevent safety incident on SAA vaccine flight: CAA

A Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) probe into a safety incident on the controversial SAA flight that collected a consignment of Covid-19 vaccines from Brussels in February has found flight and ground crew did not execute necessary procedures to prevent the incident.

This was revealed by transport minister Fikile Mbalula in response to a parliamentary question posed by the DA about whether the investigation into the SAA “alpha floor event” had been concluded.

An alpha floor event is when an aircraft either on takeoff or landing does not have enough thrust and goes into a stall.

Onboard computers on Airbus aircraft are designed to automatically take control and prevent the plane crashing.

Such incidents are meant to be reported to the CAA within 24 to 72 hours of the event, but it was informed three weeks after the incident.

Sunday Times Daily reported in March that a potential miscalculation around the weight of the fuel loaded onboard the flight would be central to the CAA investigation.

According to Sunday Times Daily, it was minutes after flight SAA 4272 took off from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on February 24 when the Airbus A340-600 experienced the event.

At the time, a source with knowledge of the incident said indications were the incident occurred because the pilots and crew underestimated the weight of the aircraft by “90 tons”.

The source said such a weight underestimation was likely to have resulted from a miscalculation of the fuel load.

In his reply, Mbalula said the investigation was completed on June 8 and the report was handed to SAA.

“They were given time to respond to the report addressing the contents of the identified issues,” he said.

Mbalula said similar incidents happened in 2014 and 2015 but were never reported to the CAA.

According to the CAA findings, “although the flight crew correctly assessed the situation and actioned the appropriate measures to contain the very short alpha floor alert that occurred, it is evident both the flight crew and ground crew did not execute any of the two procedures in place which are established to prevent this occurrence”.

Among its recommendations the CAA wants SAA to explain “why previous alpha floor incidents were not reported and propose how the organisation intends to rectify this shortcoming”.

It also recommended SAA report “any safety-jeopardising action” to the authority within 12 hours.

Mbalula said the CAA issued SAA with a “financial penalty” for failing to report alpha floor events since 2014.

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