ZS-CAR WAS INEXCUSABLE

Two years to the day after the crash of SACAA’s own calibration aircraft, the CAA issued its final accident report on the fate of its Cessna Citation, ZS-CAR. Perhaps it hoped to get away with an low-key release of the report as it was done on a Sunday afternoon. But in aviation circles the response grew into a tidal wave of anger and opprobrium.

IT APPEARS THE CAA was so surprised by the blow-back that it has now announced that it is going to contest the findings of its own report. This despite having sat on the report for two months. And so the ghastly saga of CAA’s fatal ineptitude becomes a protracted farce. How long can the Director, Ms Poppy Khoza, survive this steady stream of disasters?

There is much noise about this crash, so I am going to reduce it to just two questions:

• What caused the crash?

• How did the CAA fail so badly?

Read more in this months edition..