After the long mothballing of CAASA House due to the pandemic, I was impressed at how well the building had been cleaned up as we all met in person for the first time in several years. The AGM was very well-attended by members representing aviation business across the spectrum and I am pleased to record that CAASA is in a very good financial position. In his first address to the members as CAASA COO, Kevin Storie presented the following paper, which I believe has been very well thought out and certainly places South Africa's aviation industry into perspective.
CAASA POST COVID way forward and thoughts
By Kev Storie
I would like to this opportunity to give you a route forward of how we see CAASA moving, obviously, Covid had a significant affect, if we sit in this room and look at the runway, you remember the numerous aircraft that were one on this apron. We have ongoing issues with load-shedding, we have these supposed gas ships that will be coming that will leave little infrastructure and that will not leave any jobs behind. This needs to be considered seriously by our government. We have solar opportunities that could be implemented into our grid very quickly. For all these aircraft that you see flying we need power to make all of this happen. Sean Ledlie will tell you we have a horrifying precipice of 60 % youth unemployment that is facing us with no hope of them getting jobs.
These are who can afford to fly in an aircraft to travel. That is the reality we all must look at; this is what our government must look at. If we are going to be moving things forward, we must bring the cost of aviation down, we must grow the companies and get employment moving. The regulator had a fantastic ICAO audit as alluded to earlier. We have the structures in place; we have a safe regulator, we have good inspectors, we have a good tax collector in SARS and world class banking systems.
This story is from the July 2023 edition of African Pilot.
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This story is from the July 2023 edition of African Pilot.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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