The CAA has now indefinitely suspended the maintenance licence of LufthansaTechnik Maintenance International's (LTMI) in South Africa. 

This follows the 24-hour temporary suspension that began on Tuesday evening (March 22), but when the maintenance company required more time to settle two outstanding issues, the ban became indefinite. However, the company said it would submit proposals for resolution to SACAA late today (March 24).

LTMI was quoted in a Fin24 report saying that findings made by SACAA during the unscheduled audit were not directly related to the technical problems that led to the temporary grounding of Comair's kulula.com and domestic British Airways flights last week. 

The CAA issued a statement saying the LTMI suspension followed a four-day audit that started on March 15. The audit resulted in four Level 1 findings raised with the AMO.

A statement by the CAA said it had found that the AMO had both a quality management system and safety management system in place, however both were not implemented as per the Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs) and the requisite manuals. According to the CARs, the operator can appeal the decision of the suspension. 

Comair, which had used both LTMI and SAA Technical (SAAT) for maintenance, on Monday announced it would move the maintenance of its equipment away from LTMI to SAAT. 

Yesterday, the CAA announced that it was currently engaged in an unscheduled audit of SAAT related to these incidents.