Whistleblower manuscript alleges years of failures at SACAA amid 2020 jet crash inquest request
· Citizen
Hot on the heels of the controversy surrounding the South African Civil Aviation Authority’s (SACAA) approval of the Airlink rugby flyover, several damning concerns over the regulator’s management of its own aircraft are contained in a manuscript SACAA failed to prevent from being published in July.
It includes allegations of years of non-compliance and mismanagement, some supported by a former SACAA inspector.
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Whistleblower manuscript details safety concerns
There was also a serious collision-avoidance incident less than three months before an aircraft on an official SACAA flight crashed, questionable maintenance and an allegation that the aircraft had previously operated without valid insurance.
The manuscript was drafted by former flight inspector and air crash investigator Jeremiah Visser to be used for internal training.
However, he also later filed a whistleblower report on the events surrounding the crash of the Cessna Citation on 23 January, 2020, set to carry out calibration measurements at George Airport.
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy last week asked Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi to open an inquest into the deaths of the three people on the aircraft.
Visser said he had sent the minister a copy of his manuscript before being fired by SACAA.
The Citizen obtained a copy of it from a source within the regulator. Visser wrote in this manuscript that the aircraft, registration ZS-CAR, had a long history of airworthiness and maintenance problems that SACAA failed to address.
Maintenance failures allegedly ignored for years
He said Captain Thabiso Tolo, the pilot who died in the crash, raised concerns about the aircraft’s condition in 2016, and this was supported by maintenance records.
The manuscript then lists repeated technical occurrences involving cabin depressurisation, landing gear problems, smoke and oil smells in the cockpit and other defects.
It alleges that several of these problems were never investigated by SACAA or the Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Division attached to it at the time.
A second investigation by Ethiopian experts, called in by the then transport minister Fikile Mbalula after families protested the Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Division’s finding of pilot error, also noted several issues.
The concerns outlined in the manuscript are supported by the account of a former SACAA flight inspector speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said problems with the calibration aircraft and the Flight Inspection Unit that managed it predated the accident by several years.
Former inspector alleges repeated compliance breaches
He recalled conducting a ramp inspection of the aircraft in 2011 and discovering its insurance had expired four months before.
The certificate of airworthiness was not aboard the aircraft either and, according to the inspector, the certificate subsequently produced had expired.
The inspector said they grounded ZS-CAR. The former inspector also alleged audits frequently uncovered problems in the Flight Inspection Unit, including airworthiness problems.
“Every time we closed it down, they opened it up again and allowed them to fly,” he said.
The former inspector also recalled refusing on numerous occasions to approve the unit’s Air Operator Certificate.
The former inspector said Tolo had spoken to him several times about problems with the aircraft he operated.
He recalled Tolo saying: “I don’t know what to do because if I complain my job is at stake.”
And while there is no record of the incident, Visser’s manuscript described a serious collision-avoidance incident less than three months before the crash.
Collision warning before the fatal crash
On 7 November, 2019, a South African Express passenger aircraft, ZS-YBW, was descending to OR Tambo International Airport when its Traffic Collision Avoidance System II detected ZS-CAR as a collision threat.
The system generated an urgent instruction to pilots to act to avoid another aircraft. Air traffic control identified ZS-CAR as the aircraft that triggered the warning.
Visser says ZS-CAR could not generate the same type of instruction for its own pilots.
The incident takes on greater significance in Visser’s examination of what happened the day ZS-CAR crashed.
His manuscript identifies Eskom Aviation helicopter ZS-RXI as operating in the area shortly before the SACAA plane’s fatal descent.
He raises the possibility that the climb could have been an attempt to avoid another aircraft. However, the Ethiopian investigation could not determine what triggered ZS-CAR’s loss of control.
The manuscript also cited deficiencies in ZS-CAR’s flight data recorder (FDR).
Sacaa disputes key findings in Ethiopian report
SACAA’s appeal against the Ethiopian report disputed several of its most damaging findings, including that ZS-CAR’s certificate of airworthiness was invalid, mandatory FDR requirements had been breached, the Flight Inspection Unit lacked a compliance officer, and its regulatory approval to do flight calibration services had expired.
The former inspector was as damning as the manuscript.
“It was not airworthy,” he said. “They know that aircraft should not have been in the air.”
SACAA spokesperson Sisa Majola would not answer further questions.
