{"id":810031,"date":"2025-02-03T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=810031"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:31:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T09:31:05","slug":"big-changes-for-airports-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/810031\/big-changes-for-airports-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Big changes for airports in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South African airports are set to undergo a series of structural improvements so that they can fulfil their mandate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy established a committee to investigate the root cause of the recent problems that affected the Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Creecy believed that ATNS required a deeper diagnosis of its problems following months of working with the services and the aviation industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ATNS is responsible for the maintenance of flight instrument procedures such as the standard instrument departures, standard arrival route and enroute procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the organisation has faced several setbacks regarding flight instrument procedures and flight delays at various airports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Department of Transport noted that ATNS has also lost part of its technical capacity due to the resignation of air traffic controllers and brain drain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Creecy thus established a Committee of Aviation Experts to scrutinise the challenges at the ATNS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The committee noted the following problems during its investigation: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Critical staffing shortages, particularly Air Traffic Service.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Critical CNS systems are not as reliable as they should be.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Flight procedures were suspended as a result of not being maintained.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The committee, which was established on 12 December 2024, set out several recommendations to improve ATNS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The work on implementing the recommendations to stabilise the organisation began immediately upon their release in late January 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the Department of Transport noted that rebuilding the organisation to implement its mandate fully will take time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Immediate interventions will focus on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Improving staffing;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ensuring the reliability of critical systems;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Maintaining the instrument flight procedures; and <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Governance improvements.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly, the ATNS will need to accelerate the recruitment of critical staff, such as air traffic service staff, flight procedure designers, surveyors, technical support staff, engineers and training instructors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The process is expected to take a period of 18 months up to 3 years to be fully implemented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There will also be an urgent upgrade of communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is aimed at improving the Air Traffic Management System, Air Traffic Flow Management System and Communication systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steps will also be taken to ensure the maintenance of instrument flight procedures. These are the root cause of the most recent flight delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, governance processes will be prioritized to improve governance processes to enable single-point accountability to allow efficient implementation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese recommendations will be implemented immediately by the ATNS Board and management, with the advice of the Intervention Committee. My office will monitor progress closely,&#8221; said Creecy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI am meeting the captains of the aviation industry on Friday to secure their support and cooperation.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> \u201cI am confident that these actions will ensure that South Africa continues to provide safe and efficient operations in its airspace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The committee of experts will function for six months. It will advise the ATNS Board and the executive management on the implementation of the aforementioned recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Transport-minister-Barbara-Creecy-e1721052729385.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Transport-minister-Barbara-Creecy-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-782606\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Transport Minister Barbara Creecy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy has established a committee of experts to help address the challenges at South Africa&#8217;s airports. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":625918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[7687,21619,21618,8343],"class_list":["post-810031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-airports","tag-atns","tag-creecy","tag-department-for-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810031"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812631,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810031\/revisions\/812631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}