South Africa’s aviation regulator has indefinitely grounded a fleet owned by Comair, a British Airways franchise, following a series of safety incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It comes a day after the airline was suspended after it failed to convince the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) that it had adequately addressed the safety concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comair operates regional and local flights in South Africa for British Airways and budget airline Kulula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest safety incident involving its plane was a flight from East London, in Eastern Cape province, to Johannesburg last month with 111 passengers on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plane made an emergency landing just a few minutes after taking off, with dramatic videos on social media showing scared passengers crying and praying loudly onboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, SACAA said Comair operations had in the past month “experienced occurrences ranging from engine failures, engine malfunction and landing gear malfunctions”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comair has not responded to the grounding of its fleet, but on Sunday said its indefinite suspension was “a huge blow to our customers, employees and the flying public”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While it\u2019s unclear when Comair will resume flying, the regulator says it is \u201cfully committed to ensuring that the operator is back in the air and has dedicated a full team to assess and review the evidence as it gets submitted”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BBC News Africa<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa’s aviation regulator has indefinitely grounded a fleet owned by Comair, a British Airways franchise, following a series of safety incidents. It comes a day after the airline was suspended after it failed to convince the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) that it had adequately addressed the safety concerns. Comair operates regional and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":29546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[7368,7367,1234],"class_list":["post-29544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-british-airways","tag-comair","tag-south-africa"],"yoast_head":"\n