By Garth Calitz South African aviation professionals and passengers have become accustomed to the occasional air traffic control system issue, technical glitch or infrastructure-related operational surprise; there is something strangely reassuring about discovering that it is not only happening here. The UK's aviation system has just provided its own reminder that even countries with considerably deeper pockets, sophisticated infrastructure and an air traffic management syste

By Garth Calitz There are many ways to ground an airline. Discover that its aircraft are unsafe, run out of money, loses the necessary certificates, closes the airport or, if you happen to be Trump, threatens virtually everyone who supplies the airline with the things it needs to keep flying. The United States has chosen the latter. From 23 September 2026, Washington is threatening to effectively isolate Iranian airlines from much of the international aviation system by targe

By Garth Calitz There are airline-manufacturer relationships, and then there are relationships that become so deeply embedded in an airline's operation that separating the two starts to look rather like trying to remove an aircraft engine with a butter knife. Airlink and Embraer fall firmly into the second category. Over more than two decades, the South African regional carrier and Brazilian aircraft manufacturer have developed a relationship that extends well beyond the trad

By Garth Calitz Africa’s aviation industry is entering a period of unprecedented fleet growth, with airlines expected to more than double the number of aircraft operating across the continent over the next two decades. But behind the headline numbers and multi-billion-dollar aircraft orders lies a less glamorous, and potentially more important, question: Where will all those aircraft be maintained? The issue is already becoming visible in South Africa, where regional carrier

By Garth Calitz Mozambique’s national airline has decided that if you are going to reinvent yourself, you might as well start with the name. Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, better known to the aviation world simply as LAM, has begun a new chapter under the rather more internationally familiar name Air Mozambique, coinciding with the arrival of two Embraer E190s and an increasingly determined effort to drag the airline back towards operational stability. The timing is hardly acci

By Garth Calitz There are aircraft programmes that arrive with grand promises, enormous launch orders and enough PowerPoint slides to fill a hangar. Then there is the Embraer E-Jet, which quietly went about its business, convinced airlines that a 70- to 150-seat jet could actually be useful, and has now reached the rather significant milestone of 2,000 deliveries. Embraer celebrated the delivery of its 2,000th E-Jet on September 2, 2026, with the milestone aircraft, an E195-E

By Garth Calitz South Africa’s airline industry is taking precautionary measures to protect flight operations at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport following an unplanned shutdown at the Natref refinery, highlighting once again the vulnerability of the country’s aviation fuel supply chain. There have been no widespread flight cancellations and Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) says there is currently sufficient fuel available to maintain operations. However, a

By Garth Calitz There is something rather fitting about Air Zimbabwe returning to London after a 14-year absence. The airline’s last attempt to maintain a regular connection between Harare and the British capital ended not with a grand strategic announcement or a carefully planned network restructuring, but with one of its Boeing 767s effectively being held hostage at London Gatwick. In December 2011, the aircraft was impounded following a court order obtained by American Gen

By Garth Calitz South Africa's domestic aviation market is heading into another potentially significant regulatory battle, with privately owned CemAir asking the Competition Tribunal to block Harith Aviation's proposed acquisition of FlySafair. At the heart of the dispute is a question that goes well beyond the ownership of one airline: can an investment group have interests in both a major airline and airport infrastructure without creating a conflict of interest? CemAir bel

By Garth Calitz South African Airways can appoint an Acting Group Chief Executive Officer. There is nothing particularly unusual about that. Companies do it all the time when a permanent executive leaves, goes on leave or becomes unavailable. But SAA is not simply another company filling an empty executive chair. It is the holder of an Air Operator Certificate and operates large commercial passenger aircraft under South Africa's Part 121 regulations. That means there is an im