RAND AIRPORT AVIATION COMPANIES GUIDE

A Management era at Rand Airport has ended. Six years since his appointment, Rand Airport General Manager, Stuart Coetzee has ‘been retired’. It is notable that he has not resigned for greener pastures but was essentially forced into retirement due to advancing age.

DESPITE THE VOLATILE TIMES and the stresses of the Covid pandemic on aviation, Rand Airport has managed a commendably low staff turnover – especially at General Management level. The previous General Manager, Anton Kruger, was in the hot seat for 12 years before he retired.

Following Anton Kruger, Stuart Coetzee was the ideal person to run the airport as, prior to his appointment he had a twenty-five-year involvement with the airport and is one of its 19 private owners.

Stuart’s involvement with Rand began when he managed the well-known Vics Flight Centre and it was forced out of the old Baragwanath by the airport’s closure by the Johannesburg City Council who wanted to develop the land for industry.

Vics Flight Centre moved to Rand in 1984 and so Stuart has been intimately involved with the airport for almost forty years. When Vics closed in 2009 Stuart continued at the airport in a number of capacities, one of which was as a consultant on the all-important fuel supply.

When the airport was sold off by the Johannesburg City council in 2000, a specific condition of the sale was that it had to remain an airport at least until 2020. The ownership structure of the airport is unique in that all the hangars are owned with full freehold title. When the airport was sold in 2000 some of the hangar tenants elected` not to buy their hangars and so these are owned by the Airport Holding company and are let to tenants, providing essential long-term income for the management and up keep of the facilities.