Flight schedules at Cape Town International airport might be running on time again from Monday morning, South African Airways (SAA) said on Sunday evening.
”It is only possible to know tomorrow if flights resumed on time. Call me then because it is difficult to say now,” SAA spokesperson Sarah Uys said.
Uys said earlier in the afternoon the airline had obtained 320 000 litres of fuel, or about 80 metric tonnes, and were rationing this at three metric tonnes per domestic flight.
SAA’s Cape-to-London flight was being rerouted via Johannesburg, to pick up more fuel.
Meanwhile, the supply logistics manager of aviation at British Petroleum, Kader Jacobs, said fuel was again available to aircraft at Cape Town International airport.
He said fuel became available on the apron at 5.30pm.
”The product became available half an hour ago,” Jacobs said at 6pm. ”Tanking has started.”
But Jacobs called on airlines to keep their contingency plans in place for another three or four days to allow the airport fuel farm to build up a reserve.
Tanks ran dry on Saturday, causing airlines and passengers major inconvenience — Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan apparently suffered a delay of six hours on a flight to Johannesburg.
Wrongly blended
The problem arose when fuel — sufficient for several days and about to be shipped to the airport — was found to have been wrongly blended and could not be used until re-refined.
The Chevron refinery has been shipping 40 000 litres of fuel to the airport every 20 minutes since Sunday morning to fill four giant half-a-million-litre tanks.
But once filled, each tank has to stand two hours for the fuel to settle and before anything can be pumped into waiting aircraft.
The content of the tank has to pass stringent tests to ensure it meets airline-industry specifications.
For that reason, all efforts were directed at filling one tank. Jacobs said the tankers would run through the night to fill the others — and keep them filled.
He was concerned at the ability of Chevron to sustain its production levels, noting it was putting out fuel equal to the demand — hence his call for airlines to help conserve fuel in the Cape.
Teething trouble
Colin McClelland, director of the South African Petroleum Industry Association, added that Chevron seemed to be suffering teething trouble in starting up — this after a maintenance and upgrade programme related to the country’s conversion to cleaner fuel in January, a programme that cost the country’s refineries R10-billion.
Chevron was to have resumed full production in mid-November. Nearly a month later, it was yet to get there.
”As a result, fuel supplies [in Cape Town] became stressed,” McClelland said.
Dave Scagell, area operations manager at Chevron Global Aviation, said Chevron indeed held back supplies when the fuel appeared not to be on specification.
”I can assure you we won’t ship if it [the fuel] is not on spec,” he said. ”The product they have released is 100% on spec,” he said of the fuel supplies sent to the airport fuel farm on Sunday.
”We are working round the clock to sustain supply,” he said in response to concerns that Chevron would not be able to keep up production.
Caught unawares
SAA general manager of flight operations Colin Jordaan said the airline — and others — was caught unawares on Saturday.
As a result, 139 passengers had to be accommodated at Cape hotels overnight as there was no fuel to fly them from the city.
Jordaan said SAA put ”serious contingencies” in place and was tanking down fuel on aircraft from Johannesburg to refuel those stranded there. Aircraft were also carrying extra fuel to fly back from Cape Town without having to refuel there.
Speaking to Sapa on Sunday evening, Jordaan said the London flight would arrive at its destination an hour late as a result of the conversion, but SAA’s other flights were largely on time and on schedule.
Jordaan said SAA would be flying down its own fuel until Tuesday, when he hoped supply would be back to normal.
Nationwide Airlines marketing manager Paul Newman also expressed outrage over the situation.
”It is an absolute joke,” he said, saying it was a second time flight operations had been disrupted — this week by a lack of fuel, late last month by a lack of runway.
Newman said Nationwide and other airlines were diverting flights to Kimberley, Bloemfontein and George to refuel before flying to the Cape.
”You can imagine the extra costs involved,” Newman said, adding that those airports were now also running low on fuel because of the unexpected demand.
Fuel shortages
Fuel-industry members held a crisis meeting on Saturday afternoon to address jet-fuel and petrol shortages.
On Saturday, McClelland said problems with the availability of petrol and diesel were also being experienced throughout the country.
”We will make sure that national road-service stations will have petrol over the festive season so that people going on holiday won’t get stuck.
”However, motorists in Cape Town and Johannesburg may find that there may be no petrol at some filling stations. People should not drive their cars until the tank is empty. If you are passing a filling station that has petrol, stop and fill up,” he warned.
”It may also take a few weeks before every service station has petrol. We can’t say at this stage if there will be further problems.”
He added that fuel will be imported from overseas wherever necessary. From January, there will no longer be lead in petrol and a significant reduction of the level of sulphur in diesel.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance said the South African public is not interested in excuses.
”You cannot fill your tanks with excuses. There has clearly been a lack of planning which contributed to this chaos, and the Democratic Alliance believes someone should stand up and take the blame,” energy spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said.
”Fuel shortages, whether it is at filling stations or at airports, create the sort of ripple effects that our economy and our tourism industry can hardly afford. Someone messed up and they need to own up, before this happens again. They make South Africa sound like a banana republic,” Schmidt added. — Sapa