DA wants International Civil Aviation Organisation to inspect CAA and SA airports urgently

The DA says it wants the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to inspect the SA Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa) and SA airports as a matter of urgency.

The party says it will write to the chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on transport, Mosebenzi Zwane, to ask that he forward the request to ICAO.

The party says this request follows the partial release of a report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) of Ethiopia regarding its investigation of the crash of a CAA aircraft tasked to carry out a calibration flight at the George Aerodrome on January 23 2021.

All three flight crew members were killed in thet crash.

The DA said it will also request that the CAA release the full report of the investigation as page 56, which contains paragraphs 19 to 30 of the conclusions, was omitted from the report that was released.

The AAIB was invited by the South African accident incident investigation division (AIID) to conduct the aircraft accident investigation of the Cessna S550 ZS-CAR on behalf of the AIID.

The AAIB appointed an investigator in charge with team members to travel to SA and take over the investigation from AIID.

The DA said Ethiopian investigators found a host of irregularities in the operation of the Cessna S550 ZS-CAR, including:

• ZC-CAR’s certificate of airworthiness was invalid at the time of the accident due to the flight data recorder not being updated annually;
• ZC-CAR conducted multiple operations for several months in 2021 without the proper authorisation of the flight inspection unit in place;
• There was not sufficient graded evidence that the pilot-in-command performed the mandatory unusual altitude recovery training on a simulator;
• Irregularities in assigning the pilot-in-command to the flight;
• The aircraft did not trigger the recording of all the mandatory parameters on the flight data recorder; and
• There was no indication of whether the installed terrain-avoidance warning system was operational at the time of the crash.

The DA said the AAIB made a number of safety recommendations, including that the CAA must install flight data recorders capable of recording all mandatory parameters.

The AAIB also recommended that the AIID must become independent from Sacaa “and other entities that could interfere with the conduct of objectivity an investigation and conflict of interest” to ensure full accountability.

DA shadow minister of transport Chris Hunsinger said the party has advocated this and other critical changes and interventions for many years.

He said navigational calibration was crucial for airports and aircraft.

“Without these measures safety of flight crew and passengers cannot be guaranteed. That Sacaa would flaunt vital compliance regulations and standards is unacceptable.”

Hunsinger said while the AAIB report does not explicitly state that the CAA tried to influence an AIID-investigation, the recommendation that AIID becomes fully independent does indicate that there does seem to be undue influence over investigations.

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