Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) has confirmed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) is indeed experiencing delayed flights today, April 18, as reported earlier by annoyed passengers waiting at the airport. 

Acsa says the delays are a result of a fibre network fault.

“This fault required the airport to temporarily downgrade the Instrument Landing Category Status of the airport,” said a communication from the airport operator. This means instrument landings were not possible.

The problem was exacerbated by poor visibility, as dense fog surrounded the airport and aircraft were unable to land or take off and had to be diverted to other airports. The fog lifted around 10h00, Tourism Update understands.

In its statement, Acsa apologised to airport users. The incident would have caused a great deal of added cost for airlines, both domestic and international, trying to operate their flights to and from Cape Town. FlySafair spokesperson, Kirby Gordon, told News 24 that, aside from the inconvenience caused to its customers, FlySafair would have to shoulder the burden of the extra landing fees, extra operating hours of the aircraft and extra fuel costs incurred in using diversion airports – he said the costs were tripled by the outage.

Acsa said in the release that its technicians were working on restoring the system. It also said that the delay in flights to and from CTIA would have a knock-on effect on other Acsa airports, and that could be for some time. According to an Acsa spokesperson, as at 12h30 today, April 18, the ILS (Instrument Landing System) had not yet been restored.