When planes run out of fuel

Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), which this week announced a R1.1bn net profit for the year ending March, had to contend with “operational headwinds” on the way, says CEO Mpumi Mpofu.

These “headwinds” included three fuel shortage crises that grounded aircraft and stranded thousands of passengers at OR Tambo and Cape Town airports.

The setbacks prompted accusations of incompetence and mismanagement, but Mpofu says the criticism was not justified.

A fuel pump failure at Cape Town International in January was the fault of an engineer who caused an “electricity problem” by plugging the wrong cable into the airport’s fuel line, she says.

A fuel shortage at OR Tambo the same month was the fault of a fire at the National Petroleum Refiners of South Africa (Natref) refinery, Mpofu says. As a result passengers were stranded and airlines had to find fuel in Namibia and Botswana.

“Natref had a fire on January 4 and had a shutdown that started impacting on our fuel supply,” she explains.

Does Acsa not keep fuel reserves for such contingencies?

“We have eight days’ worth of reserves at OR. When the supplier starts failing to bring in stock to maintain our reserves we start making a noise when we get to five days,” Mpofu says.

“We are saying to the fuel industry, ‘Get your act together, we want to be back at eight days reserve but you are failing us. Stuff is not coming in from Durban, you are not producing enough at Natref, there’s a problem.’

“By the time we get to day three we notify airlines that there’s a potential risk, ‘Please go and refuel in Namibia or Botswana or somewhere else, or pick up fuel on your way here, because we have a problem.’”

Acsa has been “sitting comfortably for years” on an eight-day fuel reserve buffer, but has decided this needs to be increased to 10 days.

The Cape Town thing was about the incompetence of an engineer ... We’re dealing with that, it’s a disciplinary matter. We are even checking if it was actually intended

“The Cape Town thing was about the incompetence of an engineer who plugged the wrong electrical line into a fuel line instead of into the cargo line. We’re dealing with that, it’s a disciplinary matter. We are even checking if it was actually intended.”

Does Acsa suspect sabotage?

“We have to drill in and find out whether the engineer could make a silly mistake like taking an electrical line and putting it on the fuel line, which is our lifeline. We’ll determine what the reason was. We’re investigating.”

But that was not a “fuel system problem” attributable to Acsa, she says. It was the fault of a lone individual.

“There was a power supply outage in a substation because it was on fire. Instead of taking the electrical line and plugging it onto cargo, which is hardly using electricity during the day, he put it onto the fuel area which we depend on. Nobody does that.”

So nothing to do with lack of infrastructure maintenance, management or oversight?

“No, it was a pure engineer fault. We’re still investigating and then we’ll be able to indicate. We do these things very well.”

She blames the previous fuel crisis at OR Tambo in December last year, which led to 54 cancelled and delayed flights during peak holiday season, on failure of the main fuel valve, which “cracked and broke open”.

“We’ve implemented a bypass around the valve in case anything happens to the valve again.”

Had Acsa not been promising agitated airlines it would do this since the last time the main valve in the airport’s refuelling system failed in 2022?

The entire system was going to be upgraded, she says, including the bypass, and two other lines.

“All these things were meant to be upgraded as part of the infrastructure programme. What seems to have happened is, again, some engineer took the decision not to proceed with them on a piecemeal basis, and decided to combine the whole project. That inevitably resulted in the bypass not coming in as early as it could have.”

But the bypass has now been installed, she says.

As for the decision to enlarge its fuel reserve capacity to 10 days, this only became necessary after the South African Petroleum Refinery (Sapref) in KwaZulu-Natal shut down in March 2022 due to flood damage, she says.

“There was no need for this if Sapref was alive. What’s causing this requirement for a bigger contingent is that we now have one refinery, not two. With two refineries, eight days reserve was adequate. The minute you shut down a refinery, jet fuel security of supply is undermined.”

Has a new jet fuel pipeline now been installed in case of another Natref breakdown?

“We are renewing our jet fuel infrastructure to ensure that we never have something like a valve or line failure again.”

Meanwhile, a R20bn five-year infrastructure upgrade and modernisation programme kicked off at OR Tambo last year. There have been complaints about the airport’s deteriorating infrastructure for ages, so why only now?

“The money came to us on April 1 2024. We don’t spend when the passengers want us to, we spend when the money is allocated. Then it’s about planning and putting things out to tender. The tenders are rolling out right now.”

Implementation will be “live”, during daytime, “when people are walking there, not just late at night, so that we finish in half the time. So it’s rolling, we’re on it”.

Has the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November been an incentive to speed things up?

“Not really, we’re just rolling out on the programme. We haven’t been given extra money for G20. All we have to do is time our projects so we don’t disrupt in the month of the big G20 summit. They can’t come here and find a construction mess.”

When will Acsa start enforcing airport regulations to protect arriving passengers from being accosted and scammed by touts?

“We deploy airport security to ensure no touts in the airport terminal building, but that is supposed to be a function of SAPS. We do it because SAPS is not effective.

“I’ve submitted cases to the SAPS commissioner reporting that there are SAPS officers colluding with the touts. When they do nothing, what must we do?”