Strong winds in Johannesburg on Wednesday, August 14, meant that Air Traffic Navigation Services’ (ATNS) delay in finalising its audit of instrument approaches at certain airports caught up with it, causing flight delays for both international and domestic departures at OR Tambo International Airport.
Johannesburg experienced wind coming in at 190 degrees and 16 knots yesterday which meant that Standard Instrument Departures and Arrivals that serve operations for Runway 21 at OR Tambo were unavailable yesterday.
“Generally, we would experience delays when the wind direction favours this particular Runway 21, especially during high peak periods, which was the case today. The result of this requires ATNS to regulate the demand to ensure that available capacity is not exceeded and safety is prioritised at all times,” ATNS said in a media update yesterday.
Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking and an experienced aviation PR man, said when the initial delays were announced, the need for safety was a given.
“Nobody is disputing that safety compliance reviews have to be conducted on a regular basis. The issue here is that, as a result of poor planning and poor execution, it was not done in time, and this is now causing disruption to air services,” said Birns to Travel News on August 5.
Kirby Gordon, CMO at FlySafair, told Travel News that an estimated 10 000 flying customers across all airlines in South Africa would be affected as aircraft stuck in Johannesburg would have knock-on effects on other routes.
“We work very hard to maintain our status as the most on-time airline in the world and it’s very frustrating to us to have to delay so many of our passenger as a result of an issue outside of our control. We thank our customers for their understanding and patience and ask them to keep a keen eye on their SMS notifications for updates from us,” said Gordon.
ATNS confirmed that it was working around the situation to minimise the delays as best as possible to reduce the impact on airlines and travelling passengers.