The Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, has approved an overhaul of the country’s Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) which is expected to significantly reduce delays and other disruptions frequently experienced by air travellers.
This comes after Creecy’s recently appointed “Committee of Aviation Experts” finished its first preliminary diagnostic report on challenges facing the ATNS, which was adopted by the Minister and the ATNS Board this week for immediate implementation.
The committee determined that there is a critical staffing shortage particularly in Air Traffic Service, that critical communications, navigation, and surveillance (CNS) infrastructure are not as reliable as they should be, and that flight procedures are suspended as a result of not being maintained.
Immediate interventions will therefore focus on the following:
- Prioritize and improve governance processes to enable a single point accountability to allow efficient implementation.
- Take steps to ensure the maintenance of instrument flight procedures which were the root cause of the most recent flight delays.
- Accelerate the recruitment of critical staff, including air traffic service staff, flight procedure designers, surveyors, technical support staff, engineers and training instructors.
- Undertake an urgent upgrade of CNS systems, which will include enhancements of the Air Traffic Management System, Air Traffic Flow Management System, and Communication systems.
“Work on implementing the recommendations to stabilise the organisation will begin immediately,” said Department of Transport spokesperson Collen Msibi.
“Rebuilding the organisation to fully implement its mandate will, however, take time.”
The ATNS Board expects the process to take anywhere from 18 months up to three years to be fully implemented.
Source of frustration
The ATNS has been a source of frustration for airports and airlines in South Africa in recent years as system failures regularly result in cancelled and delayed flights, especially at smaller airports.
ATNS provides air traffic management services to all nine Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) airports, as well as 12 regional airports.
It also has a presence in 24 other African countries, plus St Helena Island, and is responsible for a large part of the Southern Indian and Atlantic Ocean, comprising approximately 6% of the world’s airspace, as per aviation expert Guy Leitch.
Commenting on the recent fuel shortage at OR Tambo International, Leitch said “the airline industry needs to be both resilient and flexible to deal with these failures and, let me just point out, ACSA is just one of the weak links in the entire chain that makes airlines fly.”
“The other big problem we’ve been seeing is with ATNS, that’s Air Traffic Navigation Services, who failed to maintain or survey the procedures that the airlines need to operate in out of airports,” he said.
As recently as October, FlySafair had to cancel several flights due to inclement weather, which it attributed to a “procedural backlog” within the ATNS.
It said it could not operate flights due to ATNS procedures for operations to King Phalo Airport in East London in certain weather and visibility conditions.
“FlySafair is actively working with both the ACSA and ATNS to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” the carrier said.
“However, this disruption is part of a longer-term ATNS procedural backlog that will require more comprehensive action in the future.”
Nearly all airports in South Africa have been impacted by ATNS’s inefficiencies, with the George and East London locations being among the most affected, according to Leitch.
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