POSITION REPORT April 2022

ONCE AGAIN, THE CAA has revived its apparently inexplicable desire to register small airfields. This has aroused general aviation (GA) out of its usual, ‘This is Africa’ torpor and GA has submitted a thousand resounding rejections in response to the CAA’s request for comments.

There are many reasons why the GA community fears an attempt to register airfields. One reason is that it is seen as the thin end of a wedge being driven into the industry to exercise yet more oppressive control by ultimately licencing all airfields and airstrips. Another possibility is that the CAA is chronically short of funds and is therefore using the ultimate goal of licensing airfields to generate revenue. They will require owners to pay fees and travellingand accommodation costs for the inspectors, once or more, a year. The inspections will be looking for, amongst other things: firefighting equipment, first aid responders on duty and fencing around the entire airfield. The CAA does however say that some (Category C) airfield owners may just sign a statement of compliance and be inspected every three to five years.

Another possible reason is that the CAA is swaying to the beat of government securocrats – who want to control the possibility of small airfields being used for drug smuggling or gunrunning. The CAA is driven by the need for compliance with ICAO practices (SARPs). ICAO’s State Safety Program was established by ICAO Annex 19, which says: “States shall establish a State Safety Programme (SSP), in order to achieve an acceptable level of safety (ALoS) in civil aviation”. Yet oddly, the CAA has made little attempt to justify registering or licencing airfields in terms of the SSP.

General and recreational aviation bodies argue that there are no benefits to registration. The CAA has thus refined its previous attempts by proposing three categories of registration: A, B and C, respectively for Charter, Training and “Proximity to another airport.”

Morningstar Flying Club articulated the concerns of the objectors by stating that; “This proposal, if promulgated, will have the effect of damaging general and recreational aviation in South Africa, due to the additional costs that will be imposed on operators and aircraft owners. Furthermore, it is practically unenforceable. Theseproposals will raise the cost of flying, thus discouraging new pilots without achieving the end goal of enhancing and improving safety.”

Not only training, but charter operators will be hard-hit – and it needs to be noted that for many tourists, flying in small planes to remote destinations is part of the safari experience – these passengers want the risk. This was tested in court by the seminal Berwick vs CAA case where, amongst other things, the court found that the tourist accepted risk as part of the experience. (Volenti non fit injuria). A senior CAA manager nonetheless emphasised that the CAA has a ‘duty of care’ and he says that this will all be tested if a billionaire tourist is killed in a plane crash at an unregulated airfield. The CAA was also at pains to tell me that their current proposal excludes aerial work such as crop spraying.

I am told the CAA is surprised at the volume of the pushback. It will be a test of how committed they are to public participation in the regulation process if they continue pushing to register and or licence airfields. Guy Leitch