Domestic travel taking off at small South African airports

Only three of South Africa’s state-owned airports — George Airport, King Phalo Airport, and Braam Fischer International Airport — have recovered their pre-COVID-19 domestic passenger traffic levels.

South Africa’s three major airports, Cape Town International, OR Tambo International, and King Shaka International, have yet to achieve this.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, Cape Town International saw the most annual domestic traffic, an average of 7.7 million travellers between the 2012/13 and 2019/20 financial years.

OR Tambo International followed at 5.2 million and King Shaka at 4.9 million. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Upington Airport (UTN) saw the fewest travellers, averaging 58,897 annually.

However, most domestic travel came to a standstill in 2020/21 following the onset of the pandemic, with traffic levels at state-owned airports plummeting to roughly a quarter of what they had previously been.

To measure this comparison, Newsday calculated the average number of domestic travellers who visited each airport during the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upington was hit the worst, dropping to 9,104 total passengers that passed through the airport, just over 15% of the pre-COVID average.

BFN also saw a significant drop in traffic, with just over 19% of its pre-Covid average utilising domestic services from the airport.

However, King Phalo and George saw the lowest traffic decline relative to their pre-COVID averages, 38.5% and 33.6%, respectively. Cape Town, OR Tambo, and King Shaka dropped below 30%.

The King Phalo and George airports immediately started to regain traffic, with both airports seeing more than 75% of their pre-COVID-19 average by the 2021/22 financial year.

This was significantly more than any of the other state-owned airports in the country, which mostly managed to recover between 50% and 60% of their pre-pandemic averages.

By the end of the following financial year, George Airport had recovered more than 96% of its traffic, reaching 102.3% of the figure in 2023/24.

King Phalo also exceeded its pre-COVID average that year, and Braam Fischer followed suit the following year.

These are the only three state-owned airports to have surpassed their pre-Covid averages by the end of the 2024/25 financial year. 

By this point, both Cape Town and King Shaka sat at 90% of pre-pandemic domestic traffic and OR Tambo at 93.3%.

Like George and King Phalo, South Africa’s other national airports had also seen promising signs of recovery, with Kimberly sitting at 98.2%, Gqeberha at 92.7%, and Upington at 87.7%.

Air traffic trouble

Despite their rapid recoveries, these airports face disruptive threats due to mismanagement at state-owned Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS).

Both the George and King Phalo airports experienced major operational disruptions in early 2025 following regulatory failures at ATNS, after it failed to meet administrative deadlines when reviewing instrument flight procedures (IFP) at the airports.

IFPs refer to predetermined departure, arrival, and landing manoeuvres to ensure that aircraft avoid obstacles while facilitating an orderly traffic flow.

They are critical during bad weather conditions with low levels of visibility, known as instrument meteorological conditions.

During these conditions, pilots rely on IFPs to perform various manoeuvres such as taking off and landing. On the other hand, pilots do not need to rely on IFPs when they can see where the aircraft is going, known as visual meteorological conditions.

Therefore, flight procedures require frequent recalibration, revalidation, and servicing to ensure original designs are still appropriate and account for new obstacles, which ATNS is responsible for providing to airports.

However, if there are instrument meteorological conditions and the IFPs have not been updated, landing a plane full of people is unsafe.

This is exactly what happened at the George and King Phalo airports, where ATNS had failed to update the IFPs.

Bad conditions caused major disruptions when airlines planning to take off or land at these airports had to delay or cancel flights.

Later, an investigation sanctioned by Transport Minister Barbara Creecy revealed that Airport Company South Africa had procured the service from ATNS. However, ATNS had ignored it.

ACSA recently announced that ATNS had made progress in reviewing IFPs nationwide after 66 were due to expire on 10 April 2025.

However, it also announced that IFPs at three airports had been temporarily suspended, meaning they were only accessible during visual meteorological conditions.

These airports included Richards Bay Airport, Upington Airport, and Braam Fischer International Airport in Bloemfontein.

When asked about the IFPs, ATNS said to refer to all their previous press statements.

In March, outgoing Airlink CEO warned the Board of Airlink Representatives of South Africa that ATNS had created a major safety risk.

Foster explained that despite paying investing in operational safety aids, such as paying ATNS fees for IFPs and investing in modern planes with the latest navigation systems, South African airlines are unable to utilise this if IFPs are withdrawn.

“By withdrawing IFPs, as a fig leaf for its administrative failure, ATNS is obliging pilots to operate aircraft with far narrower margins than any of us would like.”