{"id":21870,"date":"2023-03-29T13:50:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T17:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/?p=21870"},"modified":"2023-03-30T05:30:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T09:30:28","slug":"south-africas-unapproachable-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/south-africas-unapproachable-approaches\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s Unapproachable Approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa is going through some troubled times on the aviation front right now. Fuel issues, power outages, and now, apparently, they are losing a whole load of their instrument approaches nationwide.<\/p>\n

The Fuel Thing<\/h4>\n

Not as serious as their ‘fuel thing’ in 2022 (when floods disrupted the main transport line to FAOR\/Johannesburg and they had severe jet fuel shortages for months).<\/p>\n

This is limited to BP<\/strong>, who are to stop providing jet fuel<\/strong> at airports across the country. They\u2019ve already withdrawn from FACT\/Cape Town, and will do so at other main airports FAOR\/Johannesburg and FALE\/Durban from the end of April.<\/p>\n

Shortages<\/strong> have also been occurring FABE\/Port Elizabeth, FALE\/King Shaka, FAEL\/East London and FAUT\/Mthatha.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re headed there, double-check with your local agent what alternative fuel suppliers are available, and what actual fuel is available for that matter.<\/p>\n

The Power Thing<\/h4>\n

Load shedding is an ongoing issue.<\/strong> All airports have their own generators, so ops generally aren’t the issue. However, it is causing some concerns (again) for fuel.<\/p>\n

Airlines have been tankering into FACT\/Cape Town<\/strong> due to potential limits after the load shedding caused problems with the primary supplier.<\/p>\n

There have been some Notams suggesting limited tower availability<\/strong> at some (generally smaller, regional) airports.<\/p>\n

The Instrument Approach Thing<\/h4>\n

Authorities are suspending instrument approaches<\/strong> at a whole load of airports across the country. A check of South Africa’s Daily Airspace Plan<\/a> shows issues with\u00a0ILS, VOR, RNAV and GNSS approaches<\/strong> at various airports:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The reason for these suspensions is not yet clear, but seems to be related to an ICAO safety audit<\/strong> that is currently taking place<\/a> – as most of the suspensions got published by Notam half-way through their visit.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for operations?<\/h4>\n

It means you might want to see what is available at alternate airports<\/strong>, because many approaches might not be and that could turn out to be a nasty surprise for pilots.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, it is not currently clear why they are being suspended – whether audit findings suggest safety issues, or if some are due to problems with power outages and intermittent signals.<\/p>\n

If you have any information, please get in touch at<\/strong> news@ops.group<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa is going through some troubled times on the aviation front right now. Fuel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":21879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[248],"class_list":{"0":"post-21870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-briefings","8":"tag-south-africa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21870"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21885,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870\/revisions\/21885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}