Oudtshoorn’s municipal leaders are undecided what to do with a Chinese-owned flight school on the outskirts of the Karoo town
|||Cape Town - Oudtshoorn’s municipal leaders are undecided what to do with a Chinese-owned flight school on the outskirts of the Karoo town - where control of the council has passed from the ANC to the DA.
The town’s council adopted a report in December that recommended that the municipality terminate all lease agreements at the Oudtshoorn Aerodrome.
This would have affected the business Avic International Flight Training Academy (Aifa) and its partner, the Test Flight Academy of South Africa, which are training pilots for commercial Chinese airlines.
But former ANC mayor Gordon April failed to implement the recommendations.
The new Speaker, Chris Macpherson of the DA, said on Sunday it was unclear what would be decided because the flight school had invested millions in the town.
The DA took control of the municipality on Friday after five ANC councillors helped to remove April from his seat.
“We must correct what was wrong, but not terminate it,” Macpherson said.
“The community must sit down and discuss what is best for the town.”
Aifa’s chief executive, Willem Marais, said the flight school had spent R80 million in South Africa.
He said the academy was 70 percent owned by Chinese company Avic International and it had a contract to train students over the next 15 years for commercial airlines in China.
“We train 80 pilots in Oudtshoorn a year, but by 2015 we hope to open four more schools in towns across the Western Cape,” he said.
“We will train 400 students then.”
Student Hu Haifeng, 24, from Nanjing, said he had been in Oudtshoorn for eight months and found the local flight conditions to be good.
Chief flight instructor Andrea Griesel said the training was done in English, but she and other instructors had picked up some Mandarin.
Oudtshoorn Air Traffic Controller Michael Campher said the school had 40 aircraft at the aerodrome and recorded about 150 flights a day.
Guest house owner Robert Keene, a member of the Oudtshoorn Ratepayers Association (Orpa), said the noise was driving residents mad and recommendations the council adopted six months ago had to be implemented.
“It was clear the municipality must terminate the lease contract with the Oudtshoorn Aero Club,” he said.
The municipality has a lease contract with the aero club it signed back in 1997, but since 2011 Aifa has joined the club, built an aircraft hangar, a control tower, and office block and run a flight school from the aerodrome.
The school has 2 000 flights a month from Oudtshoorn.
Keene said Orpa has complained to the council, provincial and national government about the noise pollution since the flight school started.
“The flight school has been a hot potato where every municipal official and councillor passes on the responsibility to the next person,” he said.
“The council’s own report found it had to terminate the contract.
“It must be implemented.”
Oudtshoorn Municipality tasked a law firm, Patel & Associates, last year to investigate what was going on at the municipality.
The investigation found:
* The flight school was exempted from landing fees because it was a member of the aero club.
* It did not pay any rent to the municipality, despite its “running a commercial business from municipal-owned land and infrastructure”.
* The construction of the aircraft hangar and control tower had begun before the building plans were approved.
The report recommended that all lease agreements between the municipality and the aero club be terminated and that the municipality start afresh.
Western Cape DA deputy leader Theuns Botha said the party in the council would “make the right decision in accordance with the recommendations adopted earlier. We don’t know yet if it will be positive or negative for the flight school.”
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za
Cape Times