Question NW484 to the Minister of Public Enterprises

Reply:

Part (a) of the question:

i) Inventory of all aircraft owned by SA Express

Bombardier Aircraft Type	Quantity Aircraft	Capacity - Seats	Ownership	Average Fleet Age - Years
Q400	10	74	Operating Lease	6.5
CRJ200	6	50	Operating Lease	18
CRJ200	4	50	SA Express Owned	18
CRJ700	2	70	Operating Lease	12ii

ii) All aircraft grounded and the reason for the aircraft being grounded. Status as at January 2017:

• Qty 3, Bombardier CRJ200 – Engines and APU require overhaul.
• Qty 1, Bombardier Q400 – Fuel defect.
• Qty 1, Bombardier Q400 – Engine repair and Nose landing gear overhaul required.
• Austerity measures resulted in restricted funding impacting the fleet (engine overhauls).

iii) The period that each aircraft has been grounded:

Aircraft	Out Of Service date	Out of service days
Aircraft Grounded
ZS-NMC (200)	16-Dec-15	455
ZS-NMD (200)	10-Mar-15	358
ZS-YBT (Q400)	25-Jan-16	415
ZS-NMS (Q400)	5-Jul-16	253
Scheduled Maintenance
ZS-NME (200)	7-Oct-16	159

iv) The expected cost to get the grounded aircraft operational

• Engines requiring overhaul typically $1 500 000 per engine. Leasing options have however been exercised.
• APU overhaul typically $220 000 per APU
• Q400 Nose Landing gears supply typically $100 000 per NLG
• Cost to get aircraft operational approx. was $11 668 000. Options of leasing engines have been adopted in late 2016/2017 to save cost. This reduced the amount to $6 508 000
• The above excludes monthly cost to service specified component exchange and Q400 engine support agreements. This amounts to approx.$600 000 per month

Status as at 14 March 2017:

• • NMD Returned to service,
  • YBT in final stages of Return to Service
  • The cost to return the remaining aircraft (NMC, NMS) to service is $2 049 000

Part (b) of the question

Annexure B Attached                      

 

Mogokare Richard Seleke Lynne Brown, MP

Director-General Minister of Public Enterprises

Date: Date: