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.
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...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...