Recent announcements from Air Traffic Navigation Services have caused enormous costs and inconvenience to airlines and passengers. It’s time for an investigation into the conduct of the senior management and board of this critical entity.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen alarming announcements from Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS), which have led to restrictions on aircraft landings and take-offs at many airport runways across the country.

These developments are deeply concerning for several reasons, not least of which is the potential impact on the safety of the flying public. The effects on the airline industry and travellers have been severe, with planes unable to land at night or in poor weather.

This has on occasion forced pilots into holding patterns while waiting for low visibility conditions to improve or to divert to other airports. The costs and inconvenience to airlines and passengers are enormous.

How did we get here? What has occurred to cause such disarray in this crucial government-controlled organisation, which is tasked with designing, managing and optimising South Africa’s airspace to ensure safe and efficient navigation?

The tourism and travel industries are heavily reliant on the smooth operation, long-term planning, and professionalism of ATNS. Accordingly, the organisation’s leadership is – or at least ought to be – acutely aware of required standards and the need to plan effectively to implement updates to required protocols, airport flight designs for each runway, along with equipment upgrades.

For this to happen, ATNS needs to be staffed by competent, well-trained personnel responsible for each component to meet both local and international safety requirements.

When ATNS fails to fulfil its responsibilities, problems inevitably arise, the likes of which we are now witnessing. These issues didn’t just start a few weeks ago; they began well over a year ago when the SA Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) raised concerns about the lack of due process being followed at ATNS.

 After a 12-month extension, ATNS missed that deadline and reluctantly the SACAA again provided a further six-month extension for ATNS to get its house in order. Not surprisingly, ATNS also missed that deadline. 

The recent apologies from ATNS, stating it is “working to minimise delays and reduce the impact on airlines and passengers”, does little to address the fact that this situation was preventable. Simply put, the ATNS management should never have allowed things to deteriorate to this extent.

Outsourcing increasing

A closer look at what has transpired reveals that senior managers and the board of directors at ATNS have fallen short of their leadership and oversight functions. 

Years of established processes designed to ensure good governance, robust internal controls and audits appear to have been neglected. Red flags, concerns and complaints raised by staff and external customers appear to have been ignored.

This, in turn, has led to a backlash from some within the ATNS leadership team who appear to either be overwhelmed or driven by other agendas, leading to not only the loss of essential skills, but also the sidelining, castigating, or suspending of those who speak up or ask difficult questions. 

There are troubling signs that senior ATNS management is allowing essential functions typically handled by internal staff to be outsourced to external service providers. Some of these providers are reportedly staffed by former ATNS employees who have either set up their own companies or joined other firms now supplying or seeking to supply services to ATNS.

What was once a highly efficient and functional institution is now unravelling in a depletion of its internal competencies and beginning to rely on external providers. These providers can then demand higher fees over time, as they can exploit a weakened institution, a very similar pattern that has emerged across many dysfunctional government organisations and municipalities, who lose their ability to be self-sufficient and disciplined in fulfilling their mandate.

This is the playbook that unfolded when Dudu Myeni, who once chaired South African Airways (SAA), made similar missteps in seeking to outsource critical functions like its treasury and aircraft financing to external providers at potentially exorbitant costs to the airline. While that decision was arrested in time, this was not enough to prevent a host of other gross mismanagement activities that eventually saw the airline placed into business rescue, and for Myeni to be declared a delinquent director for life.

Investigation needed

Given these developments at the ATNS, it’s obvious to see why its management has recently requested significant tariff increases, which will inevitably drive up the cost of flight travel in South Africa.

Aside from the large bonuses sought by ATNS management – bonuses they certainly do not deserve given the organisation’s recent inefficiencies – what justifies such above-inflation increases?

The need to upgrade ageing systems and technology may be real, but this points again to poor management and the failure to account for these necessary upgrades through proper planning and provisions allocated for future system and equipment upgrades.

ATNS appears to be on the path to becoming yet another failed government institution, lacking the foresight, leadership and controls required to remain the world-class organisation it once was.

In June 2023, the Director-General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Willie Walsh, criticised both the Airports Company of SA (ACSA) and ATNS as “grievous examples of airports and air navigation service providers shifting the costs of their inefficiencies on to airlines”. He wasn’t wrong.

It is time for new Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy to commission a thorough independent investigation into the conduct and lack of governance applied by the senior management and board of this critical entity.