The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) has announced that effective immediately, it has reinstated its approval of local carrier CemAir's Aircraft Maintenance Organisation (AMO).
In a statement issued on Saturday, February 24, SACAA said it had taken the move after CemAir's successful completion of a five-phase certification process that included among others, document evaluation and demonstration phases.
As part of a broader corrective measure, the regulator, earlier this month, withdrew certificates of airworthiness (COA) for twelve CemAir aircraft after its inspectors discovered during an audit that the aircraft that had been serviced at CemAir's AMO, had been released back to service or cleared as airworthy by what it termed, "unqualified personnel".
"...the lifting of the AMO suspension is a step in the right direction and means that the operator is now in a position to officially maintain their own as well as other operators' aircraft for which they are approved. This also means that CemAir is now in a position to hopefully speed up the process of getting more of their aircraft ready for inspection by SACAA officials. The aircraft will be released back into operation once they are certified as airworthy," it said.
CEO Miles Van Der Molen has since confirmed that CemAir returned Dash 8-400 ZS-DHD (msn 4103) to service on the Johannesburg O.R. Tambo-Hoedspruit Air Force Base route on Sunday, February 25, with CRJ900 ZS-CMP (msn 15079) tentatively due to follow suit on Monday, February 26.
As an interim measure, CemAir has been sourcing capacity from other South African ACMI/charter operators namely BalmOral Central Contract (BAL, Durban King Shaka) (a Beech 1900D) and Golden Wings Aviation (South Africa)/SKA Aircraft Leasing (a Fokker 70) to cover its obligations.
