Majority of SAA’s grounded planes back in service

South African Airways (SAA) has announced that the majority of its aircraft that were affected by non-compliance have now been certified as compliant and have resumed operations.

Earlier this week, some SAA, Comair and British Airways flights were grounded due to irregular findings uncovered during a recent audit of South African Airways Technical (SAAT).

The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) directed Comair, SAA and Mango, to conduct a verification exercise on their fleet of aircraft to ensure that some of the identified irregularities are not prevalent in the entire fleet.

SAA spokesperson, Tlali Tlali, “A total of 25 aircraft were affected by the compliance revalidation process and 80-percent of those aircraft have been released back into service. The remaining aircraft are receiving attention and will return back to service soon. Whilst the operational impact of this recall was minimal in nature and manifested itself in the form of flight delays only, we still regret the inconvenience and the anxiety this may have caused to our passengers for which we apologise.”