State-owned airports management agency the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) CEO Mpumi Mpofu told media on December 12 that the fuel bypass line at the OR Tambo International Airport (ORTIA) is expected to be fully implemented by February 2025.

ACSA was building the almost 1-km-long bypass line to provide additional redundancy, with the outstanding component being the pipe, she said.

The company will also build a new 1.8 km jet fuel line at ORTIA, with engineering designs expected to be completed by February and contractors to be on site from March.

The next construction project will be a five-year refurbishment of the fuel farms at ORTIA.

"This building programme is currently in the approval process and we will have refurbished the entire jet fuel system over the five-year project," said Mpofu.

Further, ACSA had applied for a high 17.5% tariff increase to provide it with R21.7-billion over five years, but the regulator dismissed the application, stating that, given the post-Covid-19 and economic challenges, South Africans were not ready to absorb the high, front-loaded tariff increases over two years.

The ACSA regulating committee and the Department of Transport granted increases of 4.5% in the first year from April this year to end March 2025, 10% for the following year, 6.5% in the third year, 6.16% in the fourth year and 4.45% in the fifth year of the period.

"We had asked for a front-loaded tariff increase so that we could deploy the money during the first two years and then benefit from the new infrastructure during the final three years of the tariff period. However, with the staggered tariff increases, our capital investment programme is also staggered," she said.

The regulating committee also introduced an efficiency factor that ACSA must achieve. Its target was 2.8% a year and it must improve efficiency during the tariff period and save money in the way it executed its operations, she added.

BUSIEST DAYS
Meanwhile, South Africa's airports were expected to experience their busiest day on December 13, said ACSA Operations Management group executive Terence Delomoney.

ORTIA is expected to welcome more than 30 000 passengers, split between arriving and departing, Cape Town International Airport is expected to welcome more than 15 500 passengers and King Shaka International Airport is expected to welcome just under 8 000 passengers on the day.

The following two busiest days are expected to be December 20 and January 3.

ACSA has identified the bottlenecks and constraints in its systems, with most of the delays being on the landside currently. The company expects pressure on pickup and drop off areas, car parks, and check-in counters, as well as immigration check points.

It had deployed additional resources to deal with the pressures, he said.

For example, at ORTIA, there will be 342 Border Management Agency officials split over four shifts, with a commander, four supervisors and 45 to 55 guards per shift, said ACSA Cluster 1 regional GM Jabulani Khambule.

"We are also extending ORTIA's operational hours and will be operating 24 hours a day during the peak period.

"Further, we have four senior technicians going through the logs of the baggage sortation system to ensure that the system is ready for tomorrow and does not experience the challenges we had last year," he said.

The sortation system had been damaged by a bag that was outside of the gauge the system could handle.

"In addition to the physical preparations we are making, there are also interventions to prepare for the peak season, and we have ensured that people are on hand to take out the bags that are out of gauge for the sortation system," he said.

Additionally, if the sortation system fails, ORTIA teams will use emergency carousels and lifts to move the baggage, Khambule added.

"We have recovered 88% of our pre-Covid-19 volumes and, with the tariff approval in April and ACSA posting a profit during the past year, we are in the first year of implementing our recovery," said Mpofu.