Headaches for air travellers in South Africa – With medicine on the way

Airports in South Africa have been plagued by delays and issues in recent times which has left travellers stranded and planes being diverted to other African countries.

In early January, alarm bells went off at OR Tambo International Airport over a potential fuel shortage following a fire that broke out at the Natref Refinery on Saturday, 4 January 2025.

The fire caused major damage to the refinery’s Crude Distillation Unit, leading to concerns that the facility would be unable to maintain a steady fuel supply to the country’s largest airport.

The issue forced aircraft travelling to OR Tambo to carry additional fuel at a high cost so that they could be certain that they’ll be able to fly to other Southern Hemisphere destinations should they be unable to refuel.

Major carriers such as Swiss Air and Lufthansa also resorted to landing in Namibia to refuel instead of South Africa.

It suffered from similar situations in 2022 and 2024, respectively.

A few weeks after the most recent incident at OR Tambo, a damaged cable impacted operations at the Cape Town International Airport’s fuel depot and caused landing delays for some flights.

While the problem was mended in a relatively short time, several flight schedules were affected by the outage and a number of planes diverted.

The first month of 2025 had more surprises in store, as George Airport experienced flight disruptions on January 27 and 28 due to incomplete instrument landing systems which have caused numerous headaches for the airport in recent years – ditto at the East London Airport.

Also in January, the nation’s biggest carrier, FlySafair, came under fire for allegations of overbooking its flights, which allegedly saw travellers who paid for their tickets being left at the gates over the festive season.

Despite flight delays grabbing headline after headline over the past few years, the situation in South Africa is, in fact, not as bad as elsewhere in the world.

Business Development Manager at XL Turners Travel, Marvin Barnes, told 702 radio that air travel disruptions in other countries tend to be more frequent than within our borders.

“We are seeing a rise in [air travel disruptions] but not really so much in South Africa. Internationally, definitely there is a lot of that because of weather situations, but from a domestic point of view, we’re actually quite good,” said Barnes.

“We are experiencing a rise in delays, but not as badly affected as the rest of the world.”

Looking at major airports – Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban – the on-time ratio is above an average of 87% year-to-date, he said.

What’s more, the situation is expected to get better from here on out.

Minister of Transport intervenes

Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, recently 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 in the country.

Creecy last year appointed a so-called “Committee of Aviation Experts” which recently finished its first preliminary diagnostic report on challenges facing the ATNS, which was immediately adopted by the Minister and the ATNS Board for implementation.

The committee findings were that there is a gnawing staffing shortage in Air Traffic Service; critical communications, navigation, and surveillance (CNS) infrastructure are not as reliable as they should be; and 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.