In South Africa it’s been another bleak year. As I write this in early December, many people seem to be shaking their heads and wondering what the hell is going on. But in the rest of the world, things are literally going bananas.
Wars
Wars are big bad news – so I will start with those. In the powder-keg that is the Middle East, the war against Israel spread to Lebanon. Yet again, activists conflate the violent actions of a small group of people with entire nations and religions, sparking hate-filled rhetoric and yet more violence.
There seems to be no solution. So I guess the Israeli objective is to just wipe the whole problem off the face of the Levant. The big question is what happens then?
The axis of evil appears to be the mad mullahs of Iran. It is now common knowledge that Iran gave the ANC the vast sum needed to wipe out its legacy debt and fund its 2024 election campaign. As a quid pro quo it required our government to use our muppet lawyers as useful idiots by reporting Israel to the International Court of Justice – and leading anti-Israel protests. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The paroxysms of the Middle East eclipse the long-playing tragedy of the Russia-Ukraine war, which I fear will only end with a rancorous stalemate with chunks of eastern Ukraine having been given to Russia as its reward for the invasion of a neighbouring state. When will Putin be hounded out? Can Trump complete the Abrahamic accords? If he did, would he deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? No wonder the humble banana has become a unit of measurement in the Starship.
South African Aviation
That’s enough of big picture angst. Back home, in our own little general aviation (GA) cabbage patch, what’s been going on?
Well not much. Our local industry is battling along, burdened by high fuel and maintenance costs and destructive regulation. Once again, the SACAA is having its umpteenth attempt at creating the wholly unnecessary 12-year rule. This rule requires that perfectly good engines used for Part 135 operations be torn apart and overhauled every 12 years. Almost twenty years ago SA Flyer made Paul van Tellingen our Man of the Year for his crusade against rule AIC 18-19. It looks like we will have to do it again in 2025.
Another perhaps even more absurd rule is that pilots are no longer allowed to do basic maintenance such as top up the oil or pump the tyres. Now an approved maintenance engineer will have to be flown to what may be a distant location to carry out these basic items of preventative maintenance. The cost of the travelling and engineer and the downtime for the aircraft make this another industry destroying example of bad rulemaking. Yet the CAA doggedly persists.
The CAA is fast becoming impossible. It typically takes 18 months to get an AOC and a further 6 months to get a new type added to an AOC. Inspectors seem hell-bent on increasing the number and severity of findings every year – to the extent that many small operators just shut up shop and go home. I know of businesses such as crop sprayers who have just closed down, rather than continue to struggle under unreasonable AOC inspections. And thus does not only the aviation industry slowly die, but there are knock-on effects, such as for food security.
My overriding sense of things is that the slide downhill is increasing speed. Yeats wrote; “Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; … The best lack all conviction, While the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The net result is that, with a TIA shrug of the shoulders, social entropy is becoming an accepted norm.
But even in the midst of all the ongoing crapulation we still have:
Winners and losers:
Winners – all professional pilots: The most immediate beneficiaries of the pilot shortage are those pilots at airlines that are already experiencing shortages. To retain their skilled pilots the airlines are offering joining bonuses and wage increases. SAA and FlySafair are struggling to retain pilots, especially newly minted Captains. At time of writing the SAA pilots from both unions (SAAPA and NTM) are out on strike. That’ll teach SAA management to mess with the SAAPA agreements which had non-strike clauses. So this is the first strike SAA pilots have ever undertaken.
Winners – Aircraft Owners: One of the hardest things to find in South Africa right now is a good used Cessna 172. The chronic shortage of the world’s most popular plane is due to the long-awaited pilot shortage, which has finally arrived. It’s now possible to sell a clapped-out 50 year-old Cessna 172 for R1.5 million. Sling 2s are also in huge demand. And even more depressing: I see that if I had kept our Saratoga for a few more years, it would be worth three times what I sold it for.
Biggest Loser: The airlines and their passengers trying to operate into airports that do not have approved approach and departure procedures (SIDs & STARS). The ATNS slide into abject failure continues. Skilled air traffic controllers are deserting in droves, and it will take at least a year to get the backlog of ATNS procedures cleared.
General Aviation Aircraft:
Winner: Sling: Sling Aircraft are once again big winners: they have now sold over 1300 complete aircraft or kits, with an estimated 800 flying. What is even more impressive is that 80% of sales are now outside South Africa and they are making major headway into the huge American market. The Sling High Wing with a Rotax 916iS is proving amazingly popular, despite its eye watering price tag of over R5 million.
Losers All: The War in the Air:
Ukraine and Russia: The Ukraine war continues to bleed both sides. Still, the Ukrainian pilots seem to be getting good results from their borrowed F-16s – especially shooting down cruise missiles.
Loser: The SAAF: Back home, the SAAF continues in dire straits. They have managed to cobble together a half-funded maintenance plan for the now 20 year old Gripens and their Volvo engines. But at least they are able to fly a Gripen and Hawk or two at airshows
The Airline Industry
Winner: Airlines worldwide: Globally, the airline industry is reporting seat sales above 100% of pre-Covid levels. Yet seat prices remain high – thanks to a shortage of planes, and high fuel and maintenance costs.
Loser: Southern African tourism. The South African airline industry is still just an emaciated shell of its former heydays. Covid cost us three key airlines: Comair with its two brands: British Airways and kulula.com plus Mango. The loss of these three airlines took 50% of the available seat capacity out of the market. Losers are the travel and tourism industry as hotels and guest houses are still frantically discounting to lure travellers put off by high ticket prices and crime levels. How Lanseria is surviving is a mystery.
Loser: African Airlines: Africa is once again the laggard in that its bounce back from Covid has been far slower than the rest of the world, partly due to yet more restrictions and taxes imposed by African governments to protect their own airlines.
Maybe a winner: SAA: Big News! – SAA declared a profit! Their first in almost 15 years!!! But while this is undoubted good news it would have been a failure of Zuma proportions if it had made a loss. After all, it has had all its legacy debt wiped out by the taxpayer, it slashed its employee headcount by two thirds – and it is coming off an almost zero base from Business Rescue. Remember too that this result has not been audited – and they still have not released the result for the year to April 2024.
Also this year – the Takatso deal was finally accepted as being a proper dog with fleas and so was killed off by Pravin Gordhan shortly before he too died. This means that SAA has reached the limits of its post-Business Rescue growth as it desperately needs mega-bucks to be able to get new planes – especially widebodies.
Winner: The other airlines in SA: Boom times continue with a flood of new used aircraft arriving: Embraers for Airlink, Bombardiers for CemAir and Boeings for FlySafair.
Congratulations: To Rodger Foster – who after nearly thirty years of building Airlink into a really great airline, sold 25% to Qatar and then announced his retirement.
Shitshow of the year: The Safair non-resident ownership debacle. I have nothing more to say other than to wonder why this otherwise excellent airline keeps falling into this tar pit.
Loser: Boeing: After the 737 Max and 777X, disasters, they finally showed CEO Dave Calhoun the door. New broom Kelly Ortberg immediately faced a ruinous strike which cost the plane maker billions which it could not afford. And then of course there was the monumental emabarrasment of the Starliner – and the ignominy of having SpaceX bring its stranded astronauts home – assuming the fast fading Sunita Williams lasts that long. And let’s not forget – in 2014, NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion to build the Starliner and SpaceX just $2.6 billion to develop the Crew Dragon. Yet SpaceX got its spaceships reliable and certified for humans in less than half the time it has taken Boeing so far.
Winner: Elon Musk and SpaceX: Apart from the success of its Crew Dragon, using those ‘chopsticks’ to successfully grab the humongous Starship booster in mid-flight is beyond amazing. And don’t forget that SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 every four days. Some boosters have now been reused more than 21 times. And even more WOW! is watching Starlink satellites fly overhead. Try imagine how complex the telemetry must be to beam mega fast broadband data from satellite to satellite and then down to earth – except of course to shithole South Africa.
Still waiting – Air taxis: The development of the dream of the passenger carrying drone continues apace. But in reality, nothing happens other than companies going broke – the latest is Lilium, possibly soon to be followed by Velocopter. They are still a light year away from ever being approved for no-pilot manned flight, especially in VFR airspace. Oh, and someone flew a Cessna Caravan with no pilot. Jim Davis says that they did this with a Tiger Moth 90 years ago.
Winner: It’s a boy! – well okay, it’s a MALE: For me a surprising announcement is the MALE – a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, designed and built in SA. The Milkor 380 is a private sector initiative and the performance is impressive. It is of similar size to the now infamous MQ-9 Reaper and is designed for long endurance operations. There is even talk of it being used for South Africa’s currently non-existent maritime patrol and search and rescue operations – but probably without the rescue part.
Wrap-up
From this very mixed bag of winners and losers it will be fascinating to see how 2025 unfolds. Let’s not forget it is darkest before the dawn. I hope and pray that 2025 will be better and wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year.