Allegations about the competence of a trainee pilot who died in an aircraft crash at the weekend were part of the inquiry into the matter, the South African Air Force said on Monday.
SAAF spokesperson Captain Ronald Maseko was reacting to the Beeld newspaper asking who would accept responsibility for the pupil pilot’s death on Saturday during a solo navigation training flight.
The paper said Oupa Jean-Claude Ramaiti (24) of Pretoria was undergoing his flying course for a second time, having earlier failed a solo control flight and an instrument flight test.
Ramaiti was then offered a second chance, although it is understood that his instructors thought his performance was still not satisfactory.
”The irony is that Oupa was a nice guy whom everyone got along with well. He just did not have the necessary feel for flying,” a colleague said on Sunday.
”Now he is dead because someone thought he was one of those who had to help the air force’s transformation statistics look good. One cannot play with people’s lives for the sake of being politically correct. Everyone at the flying school knew it was only a matter of time before a fatal accident was going to prove the point,” Beeld quoted the colleague as saying.
Ramaiti was one of four trainee pilots from the air force’s Central Flying School at Langebaanweg sent to Bloemfontein last week for navigation training. His aircraft crashed near Lichtenburg in the North West Province.
They were expected to receive their wings in June. They only had to complete their formation flight training.
Aviation experts cautioned as long ago as last year that quality and flight safety should not be jeopardised for the sake of representivity and transformation.
Another repeat-failure trainee tried in 2003 to land without lowering his aircraft’s wheels. His Astra aircraft was badly damaged, but the student was not injured.
After the incident Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota implied that racist instructors could be the real problem.
Asked on Monday about the outcome of the board of inquiry into that accident, Maseko said it was not yet finalised.
Asked why the procedure was taking so long, Maseko said their outcomes had the potential to be career-ending, meaning they had to be thorough.
The chief of the SAAF, Lieutenant General Carlo Gagiano, recently said four or five instructors from the Zimbabwean air force would soon be helping train South African pilots.
Lekota and the chief of the SANDF, General Siphiwe Nyanda, extended their condolences to Ramaiti’s family and friends at the weekend. – Sapa