Wonderboom Coup?

‘We put on record that the current situation is putting the airport, the Tshwane officials, the airport tenants, the aircraft operators and their passengers at huge life-threatening risk’.

- Susan Puren

AS THE WONDERBOOM NATIONAL Airport on the outskirts of Pretoria continues to deteriorate, the Tshwane Metro Municipality has reappointed an aviation security training company – with an expired PSiRA (Private Security Industry Regulation Act) registration certificate – to partially manage the city’s once-proud asset. And without any changes to the service level agreement, the company’s monthly fee was upped by more than 300%, leaving city officials scrambling to find money to pay them.

Disenchanted city officials are refusing to pay the company for a period in which it stayed on-site without a contract, claiming that they will otherwise be held accountable for “unauthorized and wasteful expenditure”. They are also disputing what they claim are inflated invoices rendered by the contractor. Invoices totaling hundreds of thousands of rands have remained unpaid since January.

The metro’s official Airport Services Division, they say, has always been perfectly able and qualified to run Wonderboom but was basically replaced by a private entity, Professional Aviation Services (Pty) Ltd (PAS). The company is known in aviation circles and specializes amongst others in air cargo security, training, and aircraft sales but has never managed an airport before. And it is showing: what was planned to be a so-called turnaround strategy for Wonderboom has failed dismally. The once busy apron is mostly deserted, the tenants are disillusioned and the airport’s organizational structure is in tatters. Crucial positions have been duplicated and even made redundant, resulting in low staff morale; one senior official has committed suicide.

Tenants say they have been waiting for more than a year to get their lease agreements signed, there is seldom aviation fuel available and aircraft have to divert to Brits in North West to fill up.