Airlines took flak from passengers on Sunday during flight delays to and from Johannesburg\u2019s OR Tambo International Airport.<\/p>\n
The cause was a shortage of air traffic controllers on duty.<\/p>\n
Airlink and FlySafair confirmed delays to their flights on Sunday afternoon and night. <\/p>\n
Airlink said it was impacted by the Air Traffic & Navigation Services\u2019 (ATNS) \u201cfailure to ensure it has sufficient staff to accommodate and manage the normal scheduled traffic\u201d at the airport. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, a number of departure and arrival instrument flight procedures for OR Tambo International Airport remain suspended, including some withdrawn as recently as December 9, after ATNS failed to renew their validity before they expired,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe schedule disruptions have had a ripple effect on all our flights. In addition to departure delays from OR Tambo International Airport, the shortage of air traffic controllers prompted a restriction on the number of flights permitted to be in Johannesburg\u2019s airspace at any given time. This required the diversion of some flights to other airports, including Gaborone and Durban, leaving us with aircraft and flight crews out of position.\u201d<\/p>\n
The delays are primarily due to temporary human resource constraints at the air traffic control station<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Air Traffic Navigation Service<\/p>\n
FlySafair asked for customers\u2019 understanding, saying: \u201cWe are addressing the delays as efficiently as possible and appreciate your patience.\u201d<\/p>\n
The airline was being pinged on social media over complaints including:<\/p>\n
\u201cCape Town to home in Johannesburg took nine hours last night.\u201d\u201cWe were only informed of the delay at the exact time we were queued for boarding. Unfortunately, the distribution of meal vouchers added to the confusion, as it led to long queues at the selected restaurants. This resulted in a rushed and stressful experience once boarding resumed as we were travelling with kids. It was very chaotic.\u201d\u201cPeople in the queues would love an explanation, two hours waiting.\u201d\u201cMore than three-hour delay from OR Tambo to East London. Chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
ATNS said: \u201cThe delays are primarily due to temporary human resource constraints at the air traffic control station.\u201d<\/p>\n
The entity said it was implementing contingency measures and deploying additional resources to stabilise operations. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe interventions are expected to resolve the situation and progressively restore normal service levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
TimesLIVE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airlines took flak from passengers on Sunday during flight delays to and from Johannesburg\u2019s OR Tambo International Airport.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[3885,3881,3884,3883,3882,3880,3879,3886,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-4992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-air-traffic-controller","9":"tag-air-traffic-navigation-service","10":"tag-air-travel","11":"tag-airport","12":"tag-atns","13":"tag-atns-staffing-issues","14":"tag-o-r-tambo-flight-disruptions","15":"tag-or-tambo","16":"tag-south-africa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}