Three Structural Achievements

Contribution by Chris Bester

The backbone of the technical department who do maintenance on Herc aircraft is the 

Structures Group. During my time we were very proud of the capabilities of our structural technicians and the leaders in this group were sent to Lockheed for Advanced Structures courses.

Three occasions where structural techs played a major role stand out for me. 

1. British Airways appointed the Safair team to assist with a repair on the vertical stabiliser on the Concorde aircraft when it visited South Africa in the 1980s 

2. Safair was the first company in Africa and the Middle East to perform passenger to cargo conversions on Boeing 727 aircraft despite competition from SAA and Denel in the 1990s.
3. The repair of a Herc which crashed on a remote runway in Zambia during late 1990s. Several of the world`s largest Aircraft Maintenance Organisations were approached for assistance on this extensive repair, but nobody was up for the task. What was remarkable is that eight of the team of twelve technicians who managed the repair were ex-Safair trained technicians under the supervision of Kenia van Rensburg who was Super Attendant: Major Maintenance at Safair. There was very little infrastructure available in Zambia and all equipment and services had to be positioned by truck. Temporary repairs took one month to complete in Zambia before the ex-Safair pilot, Captain J Wilkenson, ferried the aircraft on 3 engines from Zambia back to Luanda where permanent repairs were carried out. The permanent repairs took 10 months to complete in Luanda.