JOHN LAMOLA: Bigoted ideology at the base of attack on Civil Aviation Authority

Michael Fridjhon’s dramatic opinion piece casts aspersions that are clearly underpinned by a bigoted ideological mindset (“Comair debacle shows biased Civil Aviation Authority abuses powers”, March 27). He not only peddles dangerous falsehoods on the governance of the SA aviation industry; he makes politically incendiary allegations about the integrity of critical state institutions and the structure of the country’s constitutional order.

How could he brazenly state that “in fact, there is evidence that the ANC exercises its power at a national level to undermine the economy of the Western Cape”, and throw SAA and the SA Civil Aviation Authority into that mix?

Fridjhon categorically alleges that the authority, an institution governed by international protocols to ensure air transport safety in the country, and the department of transport, are involved in a conspiracy to frustrate the Western Cape government. The authority is accused of failing to execute its duties with the impartiality and independence constitutive of its reason for being. The transport minister is painted as frozen in a corruption-riddled decision-making logjam.

Ostensibly these allegations are drawn from a nefarious conclusion on the recent actions of the Civil Aviation Authority against BA Comair, and the momentum of the processing of the Delta Air Lines application to acquire unique rights of picking up and offloading passengers between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Fridjhon’s vantage point is his promotion of the interests of the Western Cape as a province that happens to be governed the by DA. In his mind, the Western Cape is an independent territory and separate economic zone from the rest of SA. Issuing from this ideologically diseased misreading of the constitution is his abhorrence of the fact that SAA remains an entity under the aegis of an ANC national government.

Through this lens the authority would not treat Comair as fairly as it treats SAA, as evidenced by how its unanticipated suspension of Comair airline operations frustrated the travel plans of hundreds of cyclists who participated in the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

Fridjhon is wrong on a fundamental count: SA is not a federal state, and the Western Cape cannot be treated as a fake republic in the general administration of government business. A bigoted mentality that promotes the balkanisation of this country for nefarious political agendas should not be allowed to permeate the sensitive arena of the regulation of aviation safety.

Thanks to the authority’s strident work under the directorship of Poppy Khosa, SA boasts an enviable world record in the safety of its air travel services. Perish the day when Western Cape cyclists, or any air passenger, will be exposed to boarding an unsafe aircraft for the sake of preserving the politics of “the Western Cape economy”.

In the same vein, SAA serves this country’s domestic air travel landscape as a singular market, with decisions on its routes network based solely on commercial considerations. As a national carrier and air services provider SAA operates under the continual strain of the authority’s watchful eye, which is embraced for the benefit of the safety of its passengers and SA’s international air safety record.

Fridjhon may have missed the news that, last weekend, the authority issued a 24-hour suspension notice to SAA Technical in a case regarding a Comair aircraft that it repaired. The consequences of this suspension were speedily averted by SAA’s highly professional and dedicated staff.

Offered assistance

Fridjhon’s comparison of the authority’s adjudication of an incident involving an SAA cargo flight in February 2021 operating from Belgium on a preapproved exemption under the conditions of the National Disaster Management Act, with its judgment on an operating airline implicated in several life-threatening incidents, is patently disingenuous and illogical. An Alpha Floor event is an inherent aircraft thrust control system on Airbus fleets. Its activations are routinely dealt with under the risk classification regime determined variously by aviation safety authorities globally.

What Fridjhon omitted in his political diatribe on the dynamics of SA’s aviation industry is that it was the management of SAA that readily offered assistance to Comair to transport the cyclists out of Cape Town. Remarkably, SAA had to recommission one of the A340s out of a fleet it had retired to enable Comair to retain the revenue it was to make from its passengers who were booked and stranded in Cape Town at the end of that weekend.

That is the reality of SA, a unitary state, and an industry that knows what constitutes the common national interest. Contrary to Fridjhon’s blinkered view of a balkanised economy and airlines that are aggrieved from being treated with partiality by the aviation authority, Comair and SAA are conjunctive competitors, which is the vibrancy our airline market needs.

Fridjhon insinuates that Delta Air Lines is frustrated in its desire to operate a Cape Town-Johannesburg-Atlanta flight by “governing party corruption” and a conspiracy to sabotage Western Cape prosperity. Delta Air Lines is asking for a unique and special right to pick up and offload passengers from two points in a foreign country. This is termed a “second freedom right” in aviation parlance, and is set out in the International Air Services Transit Agreement.

Similar rights

Bilateral treaties between sovereign states govern the administration of this right. While Fridjhon may lament that the Western Cape is not a state with powers to enter into any treaty with the US, Delta Air Lines management understands the complexities of what they are seeking from our department of transport while they enjoy their current station from Johannesburg.

In his rooting for the air transit privileges that should be granted to Delta Air Lines, have Fridjhon and his lobby asked if the US government would grant similar reciprocal rights to an SA carrier? Would SAA be allowed to pick up passengers from any city in the US before it sets out from Atlanta?

The subliminal slur that transport minister Fikile Mbalula is withholding a decision granting Delta its wish in the hope of squeezing a bribe from this US company is shocking. There is nothing remiss in Mbalula’s referral of Delta’s application to SA’s International Air Service Council; that is what the law prescribes.

Nor is it a dereliction of duty for the department of transport to take its time to study and consult all affected parties on the implication of such an application. At stake here is the question: what is the main aviation hub of SA? Is it OR Tambo International Airport, or should we have a country without a connecting midpoint where all domestic airlines can plan their own feeder services?

What will realise economic prosperity for all provinces is a national aviation system that is aligned to global standards under the prudent management of a government of a united SA, not Fridjhon’s grieving bantustan economics.

• Lamola, a professor at the University of Johannesburg, chairs the interim board of SAA. He writes in his personal capacity.