Maintenance Related Flights – Aircraft Engine and System Health
Procedure in respect of requirement for approval as provided for in Section 7(4) – Maintenance related flight – SPECIFIC CONTINUED AIRWORTHINESS REQUIRED as contained in Government Gazette 43271 of 4 May 2020.
Due to the current situation of the Covid-19 lockdown effect on Aviation operations and more specifically the effect on maintaining aircraft airworthiness, elements to be considered in this regard:
- Costly inhibiting of aircraft engines and systems need to be avoided, and the re-commissioning of same.
- Promotion of General Aviation safety through continued airworthiness flights and maintaining the health of aircraft, this at the same time also promotes pilot recency.
To provide a service to General & Recreational Aviation, the Aero Club and the Commercial Aviation Association of Southern Africa (CAASA) have collaborated with industry to provide a web based application to streamline the processing of applications for Maintenance related flights as a joint venture with the SACAA.
The application is available here www.aerosys.co.za/aeroclub (User Manual in the link below – please read it). Note that this application was developed from scratch in a matter of days, thus may still have teething problems. Contact us if you have problems.
The procedure in more detail is covered in the SACAA General Notice # GAD-2020/001 Revision 1 as published on the SACAA website. It supplements the General Notice # AIR-2020/001-COVID-19 which covers maintenance related positioning flights and maintenance test flights. This procedure is only applicable for flights to promote the Continued Airworthiness of aircraft.
This Application was independently developed by industry, adopted by the SACAA, and facilitated by the Aero Club of SA and the Commercial Aviation Association of Southern Africa (CAASA). It bears no cost to the user, and the facilitators shall not be held harmful or responsible for any actions arising from using the service. Following this system is voluntary and does not preclude anyone from approaching the SACAA directly for flight authorisation.
In summary: The application registers users (owners/pilots) to provide details of aircraft to be flown, upload documentation, whereby the Aero Club and CAASA staff will assist in checking validity prior to submission to the SACAA who will provide approvals. Each step of the application process will keep the user informed on the status of the application by email and sms, where once approved, flight activation takes place within a 7 day window of approval date, whereby flight start and end is to be recorded which will reflect as a live link for the CAA & ATNS to observe.
Note that all road trips to airfields you will need to have your own authorisations, however the Gov Gazette notice should be sufficient.