THE crisis at SA Express, which was shut down for 42 hours last week, may be far more serious than the state-owned airline would have you believe.Over the May Day holiday weekend, the airline was grounded by the regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which said it had picked up alarming shortcomings in the airline’s safety systems.The Financial Mail has been able to establish what happened behind the scenes.The CAA grounded the fleet only after the airline repeatedly failed to meet the regulator’s stringent demands.Questions have arisen over the viability of an airline which transported 1.4m passengers on regional and domestic routes last year, and whether years of mismanagement have taken a toll.Simon Segwabe, head of safety regulation at the CAA, says the problems with SA Express were picked up after the regulator had received a high number of complaints from passengers regarding “turnbacks”, where the planes have to return to the airport after taking off.Segwabe says the ...
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